Retail park saves thousands with pump station upgrade

The challenge

A busy retail site spent over £140,000 on pump station maintenance and call-outs in the 18 months before Dura Pump solved the problem.

Two of the on-site pumps were triple-pump stormwater pump stations with pumps capable of propelling 200 l/sec. Both only had one pump installed. The pipework on one was 300mm into a 450mm discharge manifold. Warning indicators weren’t operational and the site wasn’t continuously monitored. Sewage regularly flooded, resulting in visits from the Environment Agency. All pumps and valve stations required confined space entry.

Our brief was:

• Return the site to full functionality with minimum disturbance to the retail shops and their customers
• Provide a robust, reliable solution
• Devise a monitoring system to warn parties of all issues

Our solution

We redesigned and rebuilt most of the pump stations with new pumps because most of the old ones were not fit for purpose. This included supplying and installing new control panels, level controls, SMS text monitoring systems, pipework, gate valves and non-return valves, duck feet (pedestals), stainless steel lifting chains and guide rails.

We planned the work to ensure we were not working on the same chamber for more than three days, and we worked in certain sensitive locations only on Monday-Thursday when there is typically less shopping activity.

The results

The final cost of all Dura Pump’s work amounted to less than 16 of the previous 18 months’ maintenance cost. Every single sewage and stormwater pump on the whole Retail Park was upgraded and/or rebuilt, and fitted with controls and remote monitoring, to make life easier and more certain for the site management team.

In the years since the work was carried out, there has not been a single sewage flood. The remote monitoring has alerted us of various problems such as three blocked pumps which have been caused variously by a screw left behind by a careless roof repairer and washed into the system and 500ml plastic bottles being purposely put down the toilets. Who’d run a Retail Park? The remote monitoring has also warned us of a power failure and excessive pump run time. Combined with regular service visits, this meant we managed to obviate problems which would have caused serious damage to the pumps.