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After receiving complaints about a puddle at Friendly Avenue and Greene Street, city officials found a quicker way to patch the leak.

A new replacement technique allowed workers to bump up repairs of a leaky valve to Wednesday.

“They were going to do it on a weekend, but we didn’t want to do it on the Fun Fourth weekend,” said Allan Williams, water resources director.

Normally, the valve replacement would have taken days instead of hours and shut off water for several more downtown blocks, Williams said.

However, a test run of a new device from Illinois-based Advanced Valve Technologies allowed the department to address the problem more quickly, he said. The device cuts into a water line and inserts a valve without stopping water flow.

City employees used the technology Tuesday at a site about 30 feet away from the leaky valve. The new valve was closed Wednesday morning, diverting water away from the leak’s culprit and allowing a crew to patch the break.

Many of Greensboro’s more than 27,000 valves predate World War II. Old valves are leak-prone, and the city must replace them from time to time.

Normally, fixing a valve of this type in a downtown area would require shutting off water to several blocks. But Williams said inserting AVT’s new valve 30 feet away from the leak minimized the water outage.

The process was so effective that he said the department likely will shell out about $47,000 to buy AVT’s machine for future replacements.

More than 50 water providers across the United States now use this technique, said Kevin Murphy, AVT’s managing director.

Raleigh bought the machine a year ago.

Kenneth Neal, Raleigh’s assistant superintendent for water distribution, said the machine is best used when other techniques would shut off water for several blocks. He thinks the product is worth the money.

“You don’t want to put that many people out of water just to fix an 8-inch main break or a 10-inch main break,” Neal said. “The older your system is and the bigger it is — it kind of creates havoc.”

Williams said the time and labor efficiency justify investing in the AVT technology.

“This is just really slick,” he said. “(The valve) went in real easy; it only took them two hours to get it in. It was just really a good product that we’re probably going to be implementing.”

Contact Emily Stephenson at 373-7080 or emily.stephenson@news-record.com