Taupō company takes heed of water safety

The Heed devices attach above and below manhole covers to monitor sewage levels.

With recent extreme weather events across New Zealand, all eyes are on waterway safety and quality - but one Taupō startup is taking matters into its own hands.

Heed is a venture from local CEO Fritz Frohlke, who said the company was born out of requests from councils to find an effective wastewater level monitoring solution for sewage systems.

As a lifelong kayaker, he had seen for himself the decline in water quality in Aotearoa over time. Having recent experience in developing and manufacturing electronics, the opportunity to combine business and passion was too good to pass up.

Working with long-time business partner and keen sailor Philip Elliott, they set to the significant task of developing a device which could provide ‘round-the-clock feedback and advance warning of possible sewerage breaches through manholes.

Local councils told Frohlke that they were looking to avoid issues they’d had with other products on the market.

“They didn’t want existing technology, because they’d tried it [and it didn’t work].”

One of the main problems was cost - the equipment was often around $2000 per device, with one needed for every manhole cover in an area.

An even less glamorous consideration was the hardiness of a device that is destined to be covered in sewage.

Many of the existing products were prone to breaking or misfiring due to the repeated exposure to everything that gets flushed down our toilets.

Heed’s solution was to strip out the more high-tech elements and adopt the simplest strategy possible.

“It has no moving parts of any kind.”

“It’s totally foolproof.”

A box under the manhole cover acts as the Heed device's 'brain'.

The result is a small box, called a head unit, which attaches to the underside of a manhole cover and is connected to a small, ball-shaped beacon on a cable, which dangles above the normal water line.

The whole system takes around 20 minutes to install in each manhole, and costs around a quarter as much as the more expensive alternatives.

The technology works using radio frequencies, which are blocked by liquids. The head unit searches for a signal from the beacon at set intervals.

If the signal is not found, it means the beacon is submerged with wastewater, and an alert is sent to the council operating it.

With monitoring, alerts and even updates taking place remotely, workers do not need to manually check levels and can react quickly when needed to prevent flooding.

Despite looking deceptively simple, the device required precision engineering that required a great deal of working and reworking, said Frohlke.

“It’s taken us a year.”

“You need a plan with a few incremental leaps, because you won’t get to the perfect solution in one leap. "

Most of the components for the devices are 3D-printed in Taupō, and are currently used by nine local councils throughout New Zealand, including Napier and South Waikato.

The team have even patented the device, with hopes to take on the international market in the near future.

Eventually, Frohlke said, he’d like to see Heed being used across New Zealand to prevent waterway fouling as much as possible.

“Some things you can’t prevent… but most of the things we’ve seen are totally preventable.”