Nathan Kember, owner/inventor at Strategic Designs in Summerside, has developed a prototype frost resistant, self-adjusting manhole cover that moves with the expansion and contraction of the ground, intended to reduce potholes and other structural issues. The prospective result will be reduced maintenance costs and increased safety for the city and residents.
“In the winter the ground is penetrated, depending on where you are, up west it’s five feet, down east it’s four feet, by frost,” Kember said as crews from the city’s municipal works department installed the prototype manhole cover outside of Credit Union Place. “The frost expands between seven and 10 per cent. Over four feet of ground you get about four inches (of expansion). When you get four inches we have to find a way to keep that manhole cover floating.”
He said with manhole covers, don’t move with frost expansion.
“This heaving causes the manhole to sink into the ground and the pavement around them to crack, causing potholes,” Kember said. “We recognize road repairs can be an expensive proposition and hope our cover will help eliminate some of those costs for the city.”
Kember’s design has wings that go out into the ground.
“There’s an expansion joint and the wings carry the load,” he said. “Whenever the pavement expands, (the wings respond and) the cover just comes up with it. This is a guided function and allows it to expand. The earth is always going to be penetrated by frost and expand. What they have now is not made to expand. It moves with the ground.”
Kember said the constant pavement breakage around manhole covers was a “ridiculous issue and somebody should be able to figure it out.”
“I thought about it three years ago in college and then I started the research,” he said. “I patented it in the United States first and then I got it patented in Canada. And I went from there. We’re looking for potential buyers.”
While the Kember manhole cover costs about 50 per cent more than the traditional manhole covers, the savings is on the other end with reduced repairs.
“My main focus is safety,” he said. “It reduces the swerving of cars to avoid manhole covers in school zones and wherever there are pedestrians.”
The city is providing Kember with space at the Venture Centre for additional research.
“We’re going to set up a live test facility and we’re going to do about four years of testing within a month,” he said. “We’re going to use dried ice and continuously set the dried ice on the ground and it will penetrate four feet in a matter of seconds. We’ll keep doing that cycle after cycle and we’ll get four years of data after a few months – to see how it lasts and to see what we can improve. There’s no doubt, it’s a new product and there’s going to be a need for improvement.”
Earlier this year the City of Summerside introduced the concept of the living lab and has since been exploring opportunities to make that ambition a reality.
“Under the living lab program, the city provides a platform for industry to collaborate with government to explore real-world issues and demonstrate how innovation can provide solutions,” said Mike Thususka, Summerside’s director of economic development. “That model will help us establish a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship that will benefit the community now and in the future.”
