How Long Do We Have? Increasing System Resilience with Pump Shutdown Time Estimation and Calibration

Presentation Description: Working on pump stations and force mains typically depends on shutting down the pump station. How long can your pump stations be shut down today? At noon? At 8 a.m.? How about after a big winter storm in February? Any repair, and replacement projects on pump stations, force mains, or treatment facilities is affected by these shutdown times. If pump station shutdown times aren't known, an emergency downstream can become a frantic push to truck wastewater, even if it's not necessary. Overly conservative shutdown period estimates can drive costs of even minor repairs and the time to complete them through the roof with construction of bypass facilities. Chris Ewers, P.E., of Ewers Engineering will draw from his experience with agencies who have lost their pump station shutdown times to retirement, to changing system facilities and conditions, and who never generated them. This presentation will outline bypass facilities considerations and costs, how to evaluate whether trucking wastewater is feasilble (and at what cost), how multi-hour pump station outage times can eliminate bypassing and trucking, and how to define and refine those outage times to be more useful and dependable in a range of system flow conditions. Agencies that define and refine their pump station outage times not only increase the resilience of their systems, they also put their systems into compliance with Attachment D, Section 8 of the WDRs. Attendees will come away with a set of steps for checking and calibrating pump shutdown times and guidelines for developing bypass plans.