Pirie Street Sewer Pump Call Out

We recently received a call from the facilities building manager of a 100-year-old building on Pirie Street towards the King William Street end of Pirie Street. They reported that the sewer pump station in the basement was in alarm mode and the basement was starting to flood.

Fortunately, it was Friday afternoon, and the majority of the offices were starting to empty out, so the load on the building's sewer system was starting to ease off. We explained that we were already halfway through another pump replacement in Glenelg but would be there within 2 hours.

Arriving at a Flooding Basement Pump Station

We arrived on Pirie Street at approximately 4 pm, and the city was already starting to quiet down. The facilities manager showed us the rear access via a service lane so we could get our service vehicles down into the basement, which is 2 storeys below street level. Sure enough, there was about 20mm of sewer in the basement corner where the sewer station is located.

Clearly there had been some kind of failure, whether a major blockage of the impeller or an electrical fusion of the pump's motor. When these sewer pumping stations are located in trafficable areas, they will have a heavy-duty Gatic lid on them, which can be very hard to lift as vehicles have often been driving over them many times.

Using heavy-duty Gatic lifters with 2 people, we managed to get the lid off.

Finding One Failed Pump and One Burnt-out Backup

With the use of a tripod lifter, the next task was to get the pumps out of the pit and assess each one. At this point, we had rubber boots and long rubber gloves on to protect us from the raw sewage.

Upon getting both pumps out of the below-ground pit, it was obvious that one of the pumps had not been working for a very long time, as it was completely caked in solid sewage, and the other pump had burnt out as it had been doing all the work for a long time.

Speaking with the facilities manager, the previous pump company had gone out of business a while ago, and no one had been looking after the pumps since then. This is a common pattern we see across commercial Adelaide buildings: without scheduled pump maintenance, a duty/standby sewer station can quietly degrade until both pumps fail under load.

Same-day Zenox Grinder Pump Temporary Fix

We had 1 new Zenox ZSG-150-1A sewer cutter/grinder pump in the van as stock, which could be installed on the spot to get the sewer emptied out to the SA Water street connection and allow the building to function until we could get back there Saturday and finalise the entire installation and clean up the basement properly. By the time we packed up and left Friday night, Pirie Street was a ghost town; it was nearly midnight.

Same-day stockholding of cutting and grinding pumps is critical for commercial call-outs like this. Without a pump on the van, the basement flooding would have continued overnight.

Saturday: Matching Duty/standby Pumps and New Floats

Saturday morning came around, and we collected another one of the Zenox grinders from our workshop to ensure the sewer station in the city has 2 of the same pumps in the pit. We also collected 3 new floats to upgrade the older-style teardrop floats in the pit and another 50mm brass swing check for the Zenox pump.

Overnight, the sewer pit had barely changed in liquid levels as the building was empty, so the new pump probably did not even turn on again after we left at midnight.

We set both pumps up correctly with on and off floats and a high-level alarm. The use of an on and off float setup should only be used in larger commercial-style pits, as the floats can get tangled up in smaller pits. In a smaller pit, we will just use one float to operate on-and-off switching of the pumps independently.

There is an adjustment for the high-level alarm timing and how long until the alarm will sound when the float is activated. Typically for a sewer station, you want the alarm to sound as soon as it is activated, but with a stormwater system we set the alarm to delay because it could just be that we have a major storm and the float is activated for only a small period while both pumps kick in and get the water level low again.

If a sewer pump high-level alarm is activated, it typically occurs over a gradual period as the sewer lines do not flow as fast as those of a storm drain during a major rainstorm.

Quarterly Commercial Pump Inspection Program

We have now set up a quarterly pump inspection program with this building to avoid a catastrophic failure such as this again. In high-demand commercial applications such as this, we highly recommend quarterly pump inspections to all our commercial customers, as it helps get ahead of any type of preventative pump failures.

For a similar planned changeover before failure, see our North Adelaide basement sewer pump replacement case study. If you are unsure whether your building needs a sewer ejector setup, read why properties need a sewer ejector pump and our guide to designing a pumping system correctly.

Need Commercial Sewer Pump Help in Adelaide?

Mayfair Plumbing provides 24/7 emergency response for failed sewer stations across greater Adelaide, including CBD basements, hospitality venues and multi-storey commercial buildings. Call 0429 361 819 or request a quote for sewer pump repairs, dual-pump upgrades and scheduled commercial maintenance.