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Vacuum Sewer Operations Manager Interview

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Alistair Read, Wastewater Utility Manager swapping old for new

Alistair Read, Wastewater Utility Manager swapping old for new

Interview with Alistair Read – Operations Manager Coorong Quays, South Australia.

Coorong Quays Project Link

1. What is your role at Coorong Quays?

I am the Manager of Operations of the Coorong Quays canal development in charge of the vacuum sewer system as well as the Treatment Plant. With the vacuum sewer system I am involved with the installation through to the tuning of each stage. I also review the specific design by Flovac and local engineer Wallbridge Gilbert Aztec (WGA). At this stage it is a private development and we have operated as a private utility.

2. How long has your vacuum sewerage system been in operation?

This vacuum system has been in operation since 1990 at Coorong Quays. It was originally known as Marina Hindmarsh and attracted a lot of holiday makers from Adelaide. It was the first vacuum system installed in South Australia. I have had 22 years of personal experience in operating this system. Starting out with Stage 2 with 36 Pits to Stage 8 with 276 Pits now servicing 845 homes. I have supervised seven stages, including the building of two of the three vacuum pumping stations. We also use the vacuum system to suck the wastewater off boats at the marina as well as many of the houseboats which travel up the Murray River.

Kangaroo Island bushfires

3. What do you do when not managing the system at Coorong Quays.

I am very active with the Army Reserve and often need to be away with the Reserve. Earlier this year I was tasked to bushfire assistance at Kangaroo Island. It was a devastating period. I also love camping in the northern part of the state. It is incredibly beautiful. When I am away for extended periods I know I can rely on Flovac helping out my team, and I can also keep in touch via the monitoring system if I have coverage.

4. What are some of the main benefits of the Flovac Vacuum Sewerage System in your view?

There are many benefits of the vacuum system. It has a number of environmental benefits: It’s ideal for high water tables with typical trenching of 0.9 to 1.2 to 1.5 range, for the main lines. It’s specifically suited to coastal tidal areas and environmentally sensitive areas. For example, if there is any third-party major breach, that line flow will stop due to a lack of vacuum. This means the spillage impact is minimal in the area as it is a gravity system with vacuum assisting. Far less than conventional Gravity/Pressure or LP system, where the environmental impact could be greater, so the Flovac Vacuum System is ideal for such locations.

It is also ideal as it has minimal environmental impact for sensitive areas like Coorong Quays where the development borders on the Coorong and the Murray River. It is also a very cost-effective system to operate. It takes a smaller team to run, without needing heavy specialized equipment. Thus, keeping maintenance asset costs down.

We operate everything at the development under ISO 14001, which is an environmental certification. This governs many aspects including health and safety. The vacuum system helped with the certification. That it cant leak, no infiltration, low power use and very good from a health and safety perspective was all very important.

5. Why did you choose this system over other possible options?

Manager Alistair Read at an old styled concrete chamber with Flovac valve

In comparison with Gravity and LP sewer systems we are very happy with this system, as it has the flexibility for ‘add-ons’ to initial plans. You can tune this system to work for your purposes. For example, until recently Coorong Quays had a low population in winter, with higher numbers in summer.

The system needed to be tuned to fit in with this and thus reducing operating cost it has been more energy efficient. This vacuum system has the ability to have an auto air injected system to assist with this over the ‘High season’. This system is highly flexible.

We have recently experienced some social changes from having a ‘transitional’ population to more permanent residents. This has occurred because of lifestyle changes and with the current COVID-19 situation people are now working from home at Coorong Quays coupled with increased domestic holidaying.

This system has worked well for us as it has allowed us to cope with this social change, and with changing housing designs now being built, that includes more bathrooms, bedrooms etc.

6. What do you think of FVS systems in general?

This system is a robust one that also has the ability to be flexible’ in coastal terrains. It can be designed to better fit in with the land contours.

For example, in the case of Coastal it can be designed with minimum disturbance, as opposed to conventional system installations. From an operations viewpoint it is also easy to maintain with a smaller crew.

Maintenance is recommended annually. With rebuilds 10 -15 years for internal components, depending on cycle usage.

From my experience with valves, it’s about 15 years with nominal use of 30,000 to 40,000 cycles per valve a year.

7. Would you recommend this particular system to other similar developments such as yours?

Flovac Monitoring System

I highly recommend this system for coastal environments. Used in conjunction with the wireless monitoring system (FMS) it is an even better way of monitoring this system and tuning it to run at its optimum. The benefit of this is that it can be done remotely, and tuned on site.

The FMS electronic monitoring system also records how the valve activity is performing and allows the operator to address any maintenance issues straight away.

8. Has Flovac provided good support to you and your team?

Flovac have been with us all the way through. New product developments like the monitoring system and PE collection pits. Improvements to their valve and controller and  their engineers and operators have been fantastic. They run 24-hour support, though we have never really needed it.

It’s important to recognise that a vacuum system is not just a single product, its a system. So we need to be on top of all aspects. I have plenty of other things to watch over in my life so its been great knowing that we can rely on the Flovac team. They are doing this day in, day out , all around the world. They know what they are doing and they have never let us down.

Coorong Quays residential canal development project in South Australia

Versatility for Developers

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A “Plug N Play” Temporary Solution.

Installing infrastructure at the early stages of a residential housing development can often disrupt the staging process and the cash flow of the project. Vacuum sewerage systems can make it easier.

At Flovac, our engineers have used deployable engineering solutions that will be incorporated into long term projects.

The town of Clevedon in Auckland New Zealand is finally beginning the process of eradicating septic tanks which have been causing environmental problems and will install a new Flovac vacuum sewerage system. Growth in the town had been on hold due to the lack of a proper municipal sewerage system. This has impacted on the restaurants and commercial premises and the increased demand on housing which is just a short drive to Auckland City.

Gravity sewers were looked at for the area, but a very high water table made that a very expensive and disruptive alternative. Low pressure Grinder pumps were also looked at but with an ultimate population of more than 6,000 people costs made that prohibitive. There were also other downsides with looking at grinder pumps where the local utility has had some terrible experiences. An increasing number of severe storms meant that power outages left communities with no access to sewer services. Also off sewage during low flow periods put added pressure onto Treatment Plants. The main issue was also the reluctance of the community in having sewerage infrastructure on their properties which would need to be accessed whenever problems arose.

The proposed vacuum sewer system will require only a single vacuum pump station and all sewage infrastructure will be outside the property boundaries. There will also be far less impact on residents as installation can be a lot faster than a gravity installation as all pipework will be shallow in the ground and so less de-watering will be required.

Watercare who are the water and wastewater service provider for the greater Auckland area is leading the project and has had a lot of experience with the successful Flovac vacuum sewerage system at the town of Kawakawa Bay which has won a number of engineering and environmental awards. members of the project team have also visited the successful projects that were installed in Christchurch NZ which replaced systems impacted by large earthquakes. Auckland is also in an earthquake zone, making vacuum systems an even better solution.

As the township of Clevedon connects up to the sewer network a number of new residential developments will also be built and will connect to the system. The vacuum sewerage system is versatile enough to cope with developers adding on new houses as they are built over the coming 10-15 years.

As there are multiple developers involved in the project, the timing of infrastructure installation can be difficult. What roads need to be built first, which group of houses need to be serviced first.

One well know developer with a small block of 26 houses positioned at the very end of the catchment wanted to develop their land well ahead of the infrastructure being ready for connection. As it is a major project it will take over two years to complete and possibly longer before the pipework reaches all the way to the end of the catchment. Working with Flovacs engineers an interim solution was proposed and Watercare was flexible enough to allow the developer the opportunity of utilising short term infrastructure.

Flovac’s deployable sewerage systems have been used in a variety of projects around the world, including at the London Olympics. You can see details of the projects here.

The developer installed the vacuum mains and house connections as well as the Flovac collection pits. A plug and play containerized vacuum pump station was positioned next to a temporary treatment plant and the system was connected up. Once houses are built, local plumbers can connect to the vacuum pits. The system will be operated and maintained by a local operator with support from Flovac. As the station and all of the collection pits have wireless monitoring, Flovac’s operations center in Sydney Australia can provide 24 hour support.

When the time comes, the deployable system can be moved on to the next project and the vacuum mains connected up to the main Clevedon project mains and vacuum pump station 4 km away. The developer has spent a minimal amount of money which allowed them to start selling houses significantly faster than traditional methods would have allowed for.

First FLOVAC vacuum sewer project in Norway at the innovative Center for Animal Research

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NORWAY WELCOMES FLOVAC VACUUM SEWERAGE SYSTEMS

Flovac’s Antje Adler on right

The Innovation team from Flovac’s German Unit under the management of Antje Adler has been appointed by Norway’s leading engineering design firm STATSBYGG to supply a Flovac vacuum sewerage system for inclusion in the new Center for Animal Research at Campus Ås. Based outside of Oslo, Campus Ås will become Norway’s largest interdisciplinary academic Center for the environmental and life sciences and for landscape architecture.

The Center is affiliated with the Norwegian Environment and Biological Sciences University, NMBU and will be the national plant for research and education in livestock production in Norway. Ås gård has become an environmentally friendly facility with a great focus on animal welfare.

There are space for 1200 animals on Ås farm, which consists of five buildings totaling 16,400 square meters . Small sheep (sheep and goats) have been accommodated in an airy barn of 1630 sqm, while the pigs have got their own 1740 sqm building with warmth in the floor. The entire livestock unit of 7140 sqm is equipped with two fully automatic milking robots, an advanced robot that can supply feed to the cows throughout the day.

As disease control and prevention is of utmost importance, the Flovac system was chosen to ensure that any waste from the animals is collected in a safe way. A Flovac pump station which generates the vacuum pressure in the wastewater collection network is situated remotely from the animals with flexible pipe installed underneath the livestock units. All waste is collected via floor drains throughout the facility. Flovac valves are housed in the floor drains and operate pneumatically with no need for an electrical connection. This reduces the carbon footprint of the facility. To ensure as little disruption as possible for the livestock all valves are remotely monitored and crucial data can be collected by the management team.

The STATSBYGG design group chose to work with Flovac after a close study of the Veterinary University of Hanover’s epidemic disease prevention unit’s use of the Flovac vacuum sewerage system installed in 2015. They cited the speed of installation, flexibility and that there had been virtually no operational issues and no contamination occurrences as the reason for choosing Flovac.

Information about the Hanover project can be read here.

A number of tests on the vacuum system were done, including a leakage test to show that if the vacuum mains were broken in anyway there would still be no blockage. A video of that test is available here if you would like to watch it. Flovac Leakage Test

If you have a specific wastewater problem that needs some out-of-the-box thinking, then please contact us and we can see if there is some way in which a Flovac vacuum sewerage system might be the best solution for you.

Prestons Residential Development Vacuum Sewer

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The Flovac Vacuum Pump Station was installed in 2015 to service the Prestons residential development in Marshlands Christchurch and has continued to grow with house sales in the area ahead of schedule.

Every effort has been made by the developer Ngai Tahu to ensure that this medium priced housing development for 8,000 residents is world class.

Environmentally Sensitive Development at Prestons

 

Right next to the vacuum pump station, the Marshland School for children aged 5-13 has been completed. When Master Planning a vacuum sewer system it is always important to consider that any flows from schools will be interrupted during school holidays and weekends. So to ensure that plenty of air is entering

Marshlands School

the system, especially close to the station the system needs to be tuned correctly or have an automatic air inlet system that can be programmed to take the change into account.

 

The vacuum sewerage system is the ideal technology for a development like this as it can be very flexible with new additions over time and is resilient to damage from earthquakes. Unlike low pressure pump systems, the only power requirement is at the vacuum pump station, so if an earthquake interrupts power supply the vacuum sewerage network at Prestons will continue to work as there is a back up generator located at the station.

Another resilient feature of the Flovac system is that if any of the vacuum mains break or rupture during an earthquake, the negative pressure in the pipe ensures that no sewage will leak out. A low pressure pump system operates on positive pressure, so if a pipeline breaks sewage will surcharge from the pipe into the surrounding area. In an environmentally sensitive area like Prestons, that could be a disaster.

Another benefit of the vacuum sewer system is its ability to handle high flows into the collection system. A large supermarket complex is being planned in the neighborhood complete with a Foodstuffs supermarket, cafe’s and restaurants. Already built is a large BP service station which houses a cafe and a Jetwash. The Flovac system handles the commercial premises and can handle any flows from the car washing facility.

On the right side of the BP Jetwash you can see three of the Flovac pillars that house the air vents that are required to admit air into the vacuum sewer. These are connected to three separate valve pits which are served via a splitter to handle the high flows. The pillars will also house the wireless monitoring system that is being rolled out. The monitoring system will alert operators to any valve faults or potential overflows from the pit.

The operators looking after the system have been very happy with the operational benefits and have had very few callouts. As the operators have little to no contact with sewage and have no requirements to enter the property of the residents they see real benefits relative to how the low pressure pumps have performed. Many low pressure pumps are located on the property of the resident and any maintenance often leaves residual sewage on the lawns of the residents.

 

Earthquake Sewer System for Christchurch NZ

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Vacuum Sewers prove to be the best Earthquake sewer system for Christchurch Shirley vacuum sewer a first for the South Island.

SCIRT partner McConnell Dowell is more than halfway through a big project to build a Flovac vacuum wastewater system in the Christchurch residential suburb of Shirley – the first area of the South Island to use such technology.

The catchment includes about 750 houses, with 7km of vacuum main pipes in streets as well as lateral/ side connecting pipes to homes and businesses. About 6km of mains and 150 out of 195 collection chambers have been built, with a pump station and lateral pipes still in progress. It will take just over a year to complete the project, which began April 2013.

The area targeted for the Flovac vacuum system was badly affected by earthquakes with lateral spread and land-level changes. Previously, the city’s wastewater network has relied totally on a gravity system with pipelines at a gradient to support downhill flow.

After the earthquakes, the slope changed in many parts of the city, so wastewater was running in the wrong direction. The Flovac vacuum system will offer much greater resilience if there are further large earthquakes, especially in areas considered prone to liquefaction.

A further reason for using vacuum in Shirley was to keep excavation depths to a minimum because of the high ground water table and running sand. The system allowed McConnell Dowell to lay the pipes mostly at depths between one and 1.5 metres deep.

This is shallow compared to the traditional gravity system which has pipes plunging to several metres deep to maintain the gravity-feedwhich takes a lot longer to access for maintenance or repair work with subsequent traffic and residential disruption.

Wastewater will arrive at the Shirley catchments new pumping station, on Golf Links Road, from small collection chambers, usually located on the grass berm of a street, each serving up to four properties. The only visible parts in most streets will be collection chamber lids and man-holes at ground-level, while vent stacks will sit against property boundaries.

Like in other parts of the city, wastewater from the new pumping station will go via the normal gravity system southeast to the wastewater treatment plant at Bromley.Shirley NZ Flovac Project

Residents will not notice any change

Shirley residents will not notice any difference when they flush their toilets or see their kitchen and bathroom wastewater draining to the collection chamber on the street via the gully trap/ lateral pipe. There is no additional cost to them for becoming part of this modern system.