ABSTRACT
Geomembranes are now part of most designs when dealing with leachates. Good practices suggest performing an electrical leak location survey to ensure imperviousness, or to lower leakage risks to the lower level. Several methods are available for exposed and covered tests, and the relevancy of exposed methods is often questioned: Won’t all leaks be found during the covered survey? Tiny leaks such as defects in extrusion seams may be found during dipole survey with ideal conditions but can be hard or even impossible to locate precisely. This scenario has been witnessed in an industrial waste treatment pond as well as in a compost pad leachate pond where a leak area was identified. The protection and drainage layer had been removed, but leak was too small to be noticeable to the naked eye and equipment was inappropriate to investigate any further. This led to a waste of time and uncertainty on all parties regarding the physical and financial responsibility of the defect, whereas a common Water Puddle Leak Location Survey would have located those leaks and they would have been repaired long before the installation of the drainage layer.
