HEAVY CONSTRUCTION of a Sewage Pump Station - Ep 5
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- The series finale of the new wastewater lift station. Hope you've enjoyed the ride!
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Practical Construction Playlist: • Practical Construction
This is the final episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's Made"-esque heavy construction videos, so let me know what you think! Got an idea for an episode? Share it here: practical.engi...
Huge thanks to our project partners!
Owner: San Antonio River Authority (@SanAntonioRiver)
Engineer: Utility Engineering Group
General Contractor: MGC Contractors (@mgccontractors3304)
Practical Construction is a RUclips channel dedicated to the built environment. The show builds on the success of @PracticalEngineeringChannel , one of the largest engineering channels on RUclips, with more than 3 million subscribers and monthly viewership in the millions. Hosted and produced by civil engineer Grady Hillhouse, Practical Construction videos provide thoughtful and engaging explanations of how the world is built (and maintained) around us.
Credits:
Created by Grady Hillhouse
Edited by Wesley Crump
Camera Operator Josh Lorenz
Script Editing by Ralph Crewe
Graphics by Max Moser
Music by Donovan Bullen
Color Correction and Blurring by the Nebula Studios team
Some music from Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.c...
Huge thanks to everyone who made this possible! Producing this series was an adventure.
If you love infrastructure as much as I do, you might like my book or Infrastructure Road Trip Bingo (or both at a discount!): store.practical.engineering/
Now they just need some solar collectors, a camera and a battery to drive all the small stuff to be able to overbridge small power failures.
I LOVED this series!!! I REALLY hope you continue with it... and it ABSOLUTELY belongs on this channel!!! This is the end result of what the engineers start on paper, so it's part of the engineering process. ( perhaps the making of some of the parts that engineers require would also be a series for the future of the channel?? i.e. "How Its Made: Grady Hillhouse Edition" lol )
- The only thing I would want to see added to the series if you continue with it is a bit more of an overview of what is being done, how the system is laid out, the different parts of the system, etc..... (I dont think this explains what I really mean) ... maybe in the first episode you could have a graphic that gives an overhead view of how the original station did its job or what this work was aiming to achieve ... but maybe that's just a personal preference and I'm nit-picking... I think you did a WONDERFUL job and I hope you continue to make more great content in this series :D
Awesome series!! I would love to see more!
Brady,
How much did this installation cost?
amazing series! here's to hoping for more.
I love all your videos. your style of presentation is above the rest... in a whole other level!
again thank you for the great content
The most amazing thing of this series is having the contractor on board with being filmed all the time and the videos made public! Props to them for being confident in their work.
Right? Imagine doing a dumb thing by accident and having that exposed to the whole world forever 😂
@@TheNerogardenever heard of approval and editing
@@jayathranps1319 For sure. But not everybody will review the footage.. so that require a lot of trust by the engineers on site
MGC was such a good sport about this idea. They were terrific to work with.
18 years an electrician and my current job has an automatic firing policy if your phone is seen out of your pocket, even to check the time, for security reasons. So yeah, very surprised. I've done 3 water treatment plants but no pumping stations. A lot of this was very familiar to me. Great series
As a long-time subscriber I'd like you to know that this was my favorite thing you've done to date. You did a really fantastic job. I would absolutely love to see more real world projects like this. I appreciate that you took advantage of your unique position to share this with the world. Keep up the good work.
I'll second these sentiments wholeheartedly. My interest in the engineering of civil projects like this one is intense, but not capable of withstanding the maths of most "explanations." You've done such a good job with this I feel I can't give enough praise. Whatever else you decide to treat in this manner will surely be a success.
Absolutely. This has been such an informative and interesting series. Easily his best work.
Second
I have been subscribed for 2 years and i totally agree! Definately enjoyed this series! Do more of these if you get the opportunity
I second that
This is the type of documentaries I really enjoyed as a kid, but seem to have disappeared.
No fake drama, no bullshit, just pure information. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
You continue to be one of my absolute favorite RUclips channels.
As in, a documentary. It's a shame how the idea of an actual documentary has been lost to many over time.
What?! You don't like the blippety-boop computer sounds on the Discovery channel and gadgety visual gimmicks?😮
I think anyone who made it to episode 5 can say they thoroughly enjoyed this series. While a second channel might sound like a good idea, I watched your 8 months of work in two days. I don't think content could keep up unless you had a separate team. Either way, your dream of watching a construction site is shared by many, and we look forward to watching much, much more. Thank you, Grady, and everyone behind the camera.
I’m in the Water and Waste Water industry. I know for a fact your videos are shown to new grads and new employees to help familiarize themselves with different aspects of the water cycle/system. Fantastic content.
Wow! That's amazing!
This series was amazing. It is the latest proof that we don't need big cable channels and high-paid actors to produce highly compelling, informative, and entertaining shows. The world needs to see more episodes like this. We need to show the next generation that working jobs like this is pretty amazing. They can help make the world a better place.
I work in IT and one of our customers is a local river authority. About a year or so ago I got to go on site to the 7.5 MW hydroelectric power plant in order to troubleshoot remote access to their SCADA unit. I was hardcore geeking out the entire time over all of the massive engineering in that facility, and I got all the pictures to show for it! And the entire time I was eagerly telling my hosts all about your channel!
The plant I saw can produce up to 7.5 MW with flow rates up to 810 cubic feet PER SECOND.
If you ever get the chance to do a Practical Construction series on hydroelectric power, PLEASE TAKE IT!
And if you wanna see my local power plant sometime, hit me up, I might be able to arrange a tour. I'm not in Texas, but you might enjoy a vacation a little further north ;)
I work in IT too, but never touched SCADA systems. I'm honestly inspired to see how difficult it might be to retrain and do a bit of a sidestep in my career. I've mostly managed Windows servers, but I miss running cable and hardware with everything in datacentres these days.
Well, for a hydroelectric plant, the series might be out only in 5+ years if he starts filming right now... So this might be a bit out of reach 😅
@@nankinink it just means playing the long game ;) Also, in this case, the dam was preexisting, so the hydroelectric plant was an add-on and the plant itself could go up a bit faster than building an entire reservoir from scratch.
Definitely my favorite series. You've grown into an incredible educator. It's rare to see jobs like this with the type of explanations you give. Great Job. Keep it up!
I agree 😊
I work at Val-Matic, the company who supplied some of the plug and check valves on this project, and this is becoming a training tool for our new Sales Engineers. Haven’t sent anyone describe the construction of a plant as well as this series!
I was the editor for 20 years cutting all the footage for a film crew that ran around shooting how to build and remodel houses. Yeah. Construction (and demo) crews tolerating nosey film crews are literal angels. Was good that our executive producer is a homebuilder himself so he knew all the pitfalls to expect with getting the story straight. I used to get VO hints he'd drop in the footage all the time. Saved me having to ask questions.
That was an awesome series sir. Hope to see more.
This was easily the best mini documentary series of the entire year! If you find any other opportunities like this one I am definitely going to watch that series.
My dad was a field technician for the local water company. He was the guy who'd drive out there at 3am when the red light starts flashing, with a pair of waders in the car just in case. He'd have loved how maintainably designed this station is!
The endorsement fron an experienced person like 🎉 your dad always matters.
I can never understand why the Shone system developed in the mid 19th century is not used today. With no moving parts on the water side (except the non return valves) many of these systems are still running today, after more than 100 years of 24/7 operation. They were developed when buildings in London (UK) were below the Thames, and hence the sewers. The houses of parliament, better known for Big Ben, were one of the early installations that is still running today. Between 1909 and 1026, they were incorporated into several London theatres.
When I visited the Becton treatment plant, that has to lift the sewage from a sewer large enough to drive a single decker bus through, I explained them and they were gobsmacked at their simplicity and lack of any pumps. No one on the design team had even heard of the principal.
If it is not something that you have come across, I am happy to explain it and how unbelievably simple and maintenance free it is by eliminating pumps that can block and wear.
Loved this series. As an engineer and water/wastewater operator in Texas I have used this series to show friends and family what it is that I do. I have also used this series as a learning tool for interns and new to the industry employees. I would love to see the other heavy civil construction videos include water/wastewater plant work, drilling of a well, construction of an EST, roadwork from a design, bridge construction or repair, etc. LOVE YOUR WORK!!
I know you said this series hasn't been super popular by the numbers. But it has been my favorite you've done!
Thanks for this series, Grady! I've been a water/wastewater process design engineer for 15 years, and it's really cool to see something I do every day documented for the world to see and understand a little bit better. More importantly, I hope many kids will see videos like this and get interested in pursuing careers in the design, construction and operation of civil infrastructure.
Love these, would love to have more - this is what TLC and Discovery channel used to be - super interesting deep dives into the world around us. I watched it growing up and I'm watching you as an adult. Really well done too, the editing and descriptions were perfect.
Honestly, this is better produced than those old documentaries. Great work here.
Reminds me of one of my favorite shows, “How its made”.
@@bobthecomputerguy they might been inferior but at least "on brand" and not repulsive Stuff today
This series should be a required course in public school. So many people don't understand or appreciate modern infrastructure. And it would probably get a bunch of kids interested in engineering or other civil services.
Grady as you know there is no shortage of engineers / engineering videos on RUclips. But your narrating and your voice on top of your knowledge is miles ahead of anyone on this platform . Bravo sir bravo 👏
The vacuum fishing for wire is always a treat to show people who haven't seen it done.
I'm retired now but I saw many interesting motor control systems. At first I started out with systems in bakeries such as moving flour or sugar using an air blower from silos to weighing hoppers. There are continues systems and batch systems. This description is for batch systems. The hoppers dumped the weighed product into large mixers that made sponge dough that was dumped into large tubs. After the sponge raised then it was dumped into a dough mixer. The mixed dough was placed in large tubs that were used to dump the dough into a bread former that dumped dough into bread pans. The pans went into a proofer to raise the bread, then into an oven to bake the bread, followed by a spiral bread cooler, then into a bread slicer, a bagger, and conveyors to move the packaged bread to trucks.
Another interesting project I worked on was a copper wire shredder that had a conveyor to put the wire into the top of the shredder. I remember they had a large coil of small wire that had misaligned insulation. They spread out the wire so that not all of it would drop into the top of a shredder. Once the shredder gabbed the first of the wire it quickly pulled in all the rest of the wire stalling the shredder. I bet they didn't do that again. The shredded wire came out of the shredder very warm and was placed on a vibrating conveyor that moved the wire to a vibrating separator that moved the insulation one way and the bare copper the other way with wire still in insulation of varying degrees between the two.
Later years I worked on baggage handing systems. Most flying passengers are familiar with a conveyor behind ticket counters that move baggage through the wall into the back, That's where hired gorillas throw bags back and forth until the baggage has an acceptable used look to them. OK, the gorillas are conveyors that were designed to catch straps so some bags can slide on a conveyor for hours until they have an acceptable black burn or until another bag shows up and rips off the strap. The conveyors were also designed to rip off zipper pullers (I have a great collection of them). Sometimes passengers check what I call rolly-polls (look like bowling balls). They act like red light runners at merges and like run-a-way trucks going downhill. We all love them and wish there were more of them to keep us on our toes. The bags are then sent to the local claim device so that they will be late getting to the final destination or better yet they become lost bags and can be used as test baggage when a new baggage handling system is tested. One time I saw a maintenance employee riding down a declining conveyor that came from the ticket counters. Boy did he get in trouble. Those were fun days working nights for a few weeks and then getting to go home where everyone was on days.
About a year ago, I started welding stainless pipe for lift stations, but I've never seen how the parts I made are used. It is massively satisfying & fun to understand the full application and use of the things I make every day! This has been a great series, and I can't wait to see others like it.
This is easily the coolest series on youtube. Its so in depth but also offers a macroscopic view of how urban utility development is always in a race to stay ahead of demand
This series has been extremely satisfying, I hope you'll continue! There has to be a more efficient way to get all this done. I feel like manufacturing the wells as single pieces, with plumbing connections included, would save weeks and millions of dollars.
Although I like the idea... I don't think this solution would be cheap for all the different types of infrastructure.
It's a lot cheaper to make a lot of the same pipe in a factory vs making specific, custom-made wells
@@mrping2603 I also feel like the separate-piece construction could deal with settlement, seismic events, etc better
Lots of smaller lift stations come prebuilt like you said, but not at this scale. It took 6 semi trucks just to deliver the wet well segments!
you underestimate the cost of hiring a custom haul truck to move something that is too big to haul over the road. and the cost of renting a crane big enough to lift that entire thing all at once. you're talking about weeks in transit and millions of dollars in transit costs.
@@kenbrown2808 The other day I saw a convoy of way oversized stuff and they had to have a police escort and like 20 lead vehicles/follower vehicles. The entire interstate was piling up behind them. I think they were carrying what looked like rocket parts potentially, large cylinders two end capes, and the cylinders had a lot of attachment points/small pipes. I only shudder at how much that must have cost.
A whole year to make 5 episodes! I appreciate the dedication you have to this new series!
Every civil engineering student in America should be required to watch this series and all of your content
I want to echo the previous comments. Especially Dork432. This is the best stuff in the world to watch. It makes me appreciate all the hard and yet critical little steps, like how they left the epoxy coating a bit short of the bottom of the wet well, then when all the pumps and stuff were indexed, bowled the bottom with concrete , then finished coating then installed the pumps and lines. The order of processes is so critical! Way to help us understand all the hundreds of processes that go into a project like this. I really hope you can find more projects to document.
Love to see the quality infrastructure that hard work produces! Thanks for giving us an inside scoop on all the details! I'd love to see more like this
You forgot to ask the cost! ;-)
@@marcteenhc9793Cheap isn't good. Good isn't cheap.
@@pootispiker2866 Cheaper for the same quality is always better. Specially if tax-payers' money is involved.
@@marcteenhc9793 Cheaper for the same quality doesn't exist in the real world. It might on spreadsheets and specification lists. If a project is cheaper, its quality must suffer. Things don't get double checked or a slightly out of spec but still in compliance material is used.
Safety margins aren't there for you so you can save money. They're there to keep you safe. Look to China to see what happens when you "save the taxpayers money." Do you think safety checks are done for free?
Ive been in heavy construction for 18 years. Thank you for shedding light on us! What an amazing job you did making this mini series. By far my favorite as a long time subscriber. Everything from the production quality to the caliber of work put out by the contractors you filmed was absolutely outstanding. Much respect to everyone involved.
my husband is a land surveyor and hes really enjoyed the series so far! its been funny listening to his comments and perspectives on how yall do things compared to what he sees here in the DC/MD metro area 😂
Kudos to all for allowing us to watch your hard work bringing this sewage pump station online. Fascinating for this retiree! Future projects? How about design, layout, roughing in a new housing subdivision to include water, fire hydrants, sewage, electrical, internet, roadways, basements/slabs, housing, etc., to occupancy? Also fascinated with water towers/pumps, power substations, highway/bridge construction to include sensors for smart travel monitoring. I find that young people who go from an apartment to their first house seldom know how their house works. When a sump alarm goes off or GFCI outlet trips, they have no clue how to get things going again. You could provide a much needed public service, I believe.
I hope you make more of these in the future along with your usual content. Your channel has given me an appreciation for all the infrastructure around me that was previously unnoticed.
Beautifully done series. Honestly, this series will be a resource for many in years to come. Great for showing folks what happens with these products and how it all ties together into a much larger system. As an engineer in the municipal valve world it was cool to see the whole process continually, as you often only see bits of it in our position. Even if it was a competitors product installed. ;) Thanks for keeping a true and tied technology documentary art form alive.
Thank you Grady and everyone involved, this was pure joy to watch! I hope you get to do this a whole lot more, and can't wait to see it!
Great video! As a potable water plant operator, the majority of your video is also incorporated on drinking water as well. SCADA, transducers and redundancy measures are extremely similar. Difference is we use powerful motors to extract water from underground aquifers and treated into clearwells where chemicals are added and sent out to community either by booster pumps or elevation tanks.
These are the people that keep our modern civilization running. Hats off to them.
The way the pumps are installed and so easily serviced is amazing. Love when things are designed for smooth maintenance from the start.
How exactly do those work? I couldn't really figure out where the water goes through them
Thank you for the series! There's nothing more pleasing than watching people who know what they're doing being functional and useful af.
This series' videos are among my favourite of the channel. I truly appreciate the slow pace and the attention to detail and care that has been put into. Congratulations!
I completely enjoyed this series, I would love to see more content like this. It speaks to both the fascinated child in me who wanted to see these "big machines and big works", as well as the curious child AND adult in me who wants to know "just how the heck does that even do what it does now?".
I'm torn between this format needing its own channel, and being intermingled with this one. Either way, having links between the serial/long-form/documentary episodes and any more in-depth episodes where specifics are covered would be great.
Finally, two of the larger-scale type projects I would be interested in seeing are: 1) electrical (new long-distance line installation and hookup, new substation built and put into service) as well as telecommunications, either putting a new central-office (or switching station) into service, or planning out a new neighborhood and its wiring up. Same with electricity I guess!
Thanks again for this great series Grady, I really enjoyed it, and I'm glad that everyone and all entities involved cooperated!
This series was extremely well done, and totally has its place on an engineering channel. In future series, I'd love to see probably a tad more schematics about how the whole thing fits in the wider picture, and how all the things are interconnected, because being lost in the details of concrete pouring made me lose track of the bigger context. Basically, a bit more balance on explaining the "why" with the "how".
This was an incredible series!!! The water authority, the contractors, everyone, good work across the board! Public engagement like this is so important :)
This series was fantastic and I absolutely want to see more. I don't think it needs a separate channel at all really.
Thanks Grady, this has been a brilliant series. I have to admit that the term Umarell applies to me, as I'm retired and spent 18 months checking up nearly every day on a large wastewater overlay that was being installed down an main road near my house. They used micro-boring (pipe-jacking) so the road could stay open, and the day-to-day engineering of that project was incredibly interesting to this retired Telecoms engineer!
The way they snaked that wire with the vacuum and bag was so clever!
awesome project. I hope to see much more of this in the future!
If you ever think 3d animation would make the video better, don't hesitate to reach out for a little collab
Those 3d animations are amazing to see and explain hard stuff really easily especially the plane one.
Absolutely fantastic series! Every time I go on break, I sit in my car and watch. Please keep this series alive, man!
The scale of these projects is fascinating. Thanks for creating this, would like to see more.
The number of steps and the forethought behind every inch of pipe and every pound of concrete (and many different *kinds* of concrete) is nothing short of mind blowing.
This is one of those parts of our modern life in an industrialized society to which 99.999% of us never give a second thought, and that absolutely 100% requires an extraordinary confluence of many engineers' and builders' expert knowledge to even be possible.
In the case of an End Of The World As We Know It scenario, the survivors would need decades or even centuries to be able to build something like this again.
Grady, I’m not an engineer but I do have a desire to understand how just the everyday things make our lives better in the US and other first world countries. Things that we absolutely take for granted and in a world we want things now and not tomorrow, next week, new month, or next year. We all need a better understanding of how the engineering and construction works for modern everyday day lives. Thank you! Keep doing this content and the content you usually do on this channel.
Thank you Grady and everyone who helped make the series happen. what an eye opening series
Great mini-series, Grady. I've always enjoyed your shortform videos, and was pleasantly surprised with how fun this series was. This semi-longform format is the perfect length to occupy time while still feeling fresh and light. Hope we get more of them.
We thoroughly enjoyed this series. I am sure that this up-close view of our built environment will inspire more people to explore careers in construction and civil engineering, so I am pitching in in hopes that more of these series will be made. :)
My cat watched the whole video with me from the coffee table. 10/10 video ❤❤❤
Absolutely fantastic, I’ve never been so excited about sewerage in all my life! I’d love to see more projects like this, I can’t believe how much you and your team have put into this I know it took you over five months, everything was very impressive and you make something complicated so easy to understand and very interesting, so let me say a huge thank you very much, and congratulations!!
Such a great series! Civil infrastructure is so under-appreciated and you are helping bring it to the forefront. Please make more of these!
The complexity of common services we take for granted is mind-boggling
An engineer that's in touch with the physical side of things is always a blessing
This has been such an enlightening and remarkably enjoyable series. I don't recall ever being excited to see another in a series on RUclips -- and it's for a sewage pump station. Thank you for compiling this so we can appreciate the effort that goes into things we take for granted.
Amazing content, thanks goes out to you, and the whole construction team for allowing this construction to be documented. It's been an incredibly insightful series to watch
As a structural engineer who designs precast concrete structures, including lift stations, this was really cool to see. I don't often get to see an entire project from literal start to finish so even for someone who is in this industry it was a great series.
Excellent series, thank you. Highlighting the hidden critical workers and systems that keep civilization functioning.
Surprisingly fascinating series. I'd love to see more projects like this, it's amazing how cool the team was with having a nosy film crew documenting everything. Here's hoping the success of this series inspires more in the future!
Amazing series and super thankful to everyone involved for allowing this to happen!
This entire series honestly felt like I was main-lining 96 hours of pure Canadian "How It's Made".
The final product was mind-blowing, I could watch this over and over, thank you for making such a socratic masterpiece. 👏. Great job! 👍
I work in HR and know next to nothing about engineering or construction, but I LOVE this content! More, please! You're doing a great job, Grady! I love learning about things that are so different from what I do on a daily basis.
I don't comment very often on videos on RUclips, but I definitely needed to make an exemption for this work.
So many of us are fascinated with the workings of civil engineering and construction of the every day facilities of modern living, but hardly ever get to see the actual knowhow of how it all marries together. This little series did just so in volumes and I'm sure we can all have a greater appreciation for the work and planning that goes into these projects.
Im definitely gonna be looking forward to any further multiple video series like this moving forward. Beautifully done man👍👍.
Respect from Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹
The bag in the conduit is a great idea for running the wires. Separate of that, kind of sad seeing how developed the land is becoming.
And how car-centric it all is. And knowing how much energy is required to pump this sewage up - how utterly wasteful we humans are.
@@idjles100kW with 2 pumps running is certainly a lot of power but compared to how wasteful other things are, it's not comparable.
The bag on the string is called a mouse, and the trick has been passed down by generations of electricians.
@@idjleswould you rather we didn’t pump it?
@@idjlesin the industrial world, those actually aren't very big pumps. I've seen 350HP pumps used to distribute chilled water for building cooling, and the actual chillers consumed nearly 2000HP, plus more 350HP pumps to pump hot water to the cooling towers, and the cooling towers all have 75-100HP fans. These also aren't run at 10-20% capacity normally like a car engine, they run near their full capacity for long periods of time. I saw meters in a paper mill once that estimated they spent at least $17,000 an hour on electricity, and they did not look like they'd been updated in a good long while either, and that's just from utilities. They also run their own power plant at the mill!
TLDR: Don't worry, that lift station does not use that much power!
(1) wow. I mean, just, wow. Impressed by so many things here. That Grady has scaled up (a team!) while staying so true to the style he established over years with practical engineering. That he is this counter-cultural: slow! Cheerful! Focused on the humble, crucial, easily overlooked (by us non-engineers) and intricately devised foundations of modern life. Not kidding when I say makes me optimistic about humanity that this kind of thing might be popular (or presumably popular enough to support the team making it)
(2) every one of the fail safes and redundancies in this system made me think about what kind of mishaps errors and foul-smelling messes had to happen over the history of human wastewater management to get to the place where we take for granted the invisibility of the systems for sewage processing and transport. That could be a whole ‘nother channel :)
Long time watcher (like, since the start) first time commenter, and, as a STEM educator, my hat’s off to you, Grady and Co. Bravi.
Thanks for the kind words!
My childhood memories of growing up on a sewage treatment plant where my dad worked as a maintenance supervisor. I loved every minute of it when I had the chance to go to work with my dad!!!
It'd be interesting to hook up a little 360 camera and GPS unit, send it down one of the lines and be able to follow it throughout the system
(GPS + inertial tracking when it's unable to obtain a signal. There's also RF if someone were to walk along the surface to manually trace-out the path)
I'm not sure I want to see what a camera might show in a sewer pipe. 💩
Most probably GPS and internet coverage will be quite poor through most of such journey. Unfortunately. Video footage might be interesting, but would require a lot of light and hope that it doesn't get stuck somewhere.
Do people think GPS is magic?
GPS needs view of the sky, so better to have an inertial tracking unit to map that journey;-)
The pump would grind it to pieces
Vote for this to continue on the Practical Engineering channel. Bridges, water treatment plant, power plant build, dam deconstruction please!
This is what the world needs. Informative, fun, a bit “odd”, series about stuff from a host that knows what he is talking about. I loved every minute of it.
As for your question. I would make a separate channel as the content differs wildly (in format). I think one would hurt the others performance in the long run, and vice versa.
I would love to see a desalination plant.
I’m a CAD drafter at an engineering firm and I found this series fascinating and very educational
Thanks for this trip down to memory lane.
When I was backpacking Australia at the age of 24 I ended up working at the construction of a new sewage treatment plant in Port Douglas AU.
Where the sewage enters the treatment plant there is a lift-station as well where I installed the pumps and pipes.
I have awesome memories of that time.
Love your channel giving Insights to civil engineering. But this series on the lift station in particular is special to me personally.
Although I ended up in a totally different career I can advise anyone to get involved with this kind of engineering / construction.
The idea that 24 years later I can zoom into google maps and see that site still being at service to the community of Port Douglas still gives me a good feeling. Despite the minor part that I played there.
I love all the redundancy, 3 normal pumps, 1 diesel pump, external pump access, generator plugs. This is starfleet levels of redundancy, Miles Obrian would be so proud.
Absolutely, you need to do more of these! It's eye-opening to see the buried complexity of something that looks so simple on the surface.
What has blown my mind about this project is that on the surface, it's an incredibly simple piece of infrastructure.
Just a hole in the ground and a few pumps and pipes.
Dirty water flows in, and is pumped out to continue on its way.
Yet the amount of engineering, effort, time, materials, and money to put it all together is enormous!
And means I can't even begin to guess at the level of engineering that goes into more complex projects, like the treatment plan down the road!
This series was the best (…so far)! Now I would love to see another construction - maybe a road tunnel or a railway project?
I rarely leave comments, I'd much rather learn from the back of the class. I have to speak up.
This series has been something I've been looking forward to for the past several weeks.
I love learning about how the hidden things work, and I'm excited to watch the next series!
I would love a documentary like this on the construction of a bridge. This is a great series.
I spent 30 years in the construction industry, the last 15 building water, sewer, and storm drain lines. I have built about a dozen lift stations. This was enjoyable from start to finish and brought back a lot of memories. Kudos on a well-done series.
Watching this series from Northern Ireland. Thoroughly enjoyed it and looking forward to a similar series in the future.
I appreciate the San Antonio River Authority and all the workers here. I love seeing how things are built like this and I hope for more.
Great work as always. Excavation, water pipes and sandblasting all in one video!!!! Where else. Thanks as always for the great work Grady!
YES I wanna see more of this, I've always loved watching construction, PLEASE make more of these! My favorite series on the channel!
I find very entertaining and educational to see how a job construction sit works in a different country, as a fellow engeneering in Brasil I enjoyed wacthing this series. Keep up the good work. I happened to work on the construction of several lift stations here, so I was able to find different ways to do my day-to-day work. Thanks very much.
This was a great series. Normally in my work I don't see the pump stations while they are being constructed, well, unless there is a serious issue that comes up during construction. I normally only see them for testing and commissioning once they are built. Was nice to see the stuff I normally do not.
I love the plastic bag and the vacuum to get the pull through through the pipes!
Brilliant, for someone that is charged with cleaning these stations on a regular basis, it is great to see the design and construction side of this process. Keep up the great work.
Grady, this was so cool to watch from start to finish. I so enjoy the thoroughness, level of detail, and quality you put into your videos. I do wonder how many people are out there who are going to watch a 5-part sewer pump construction video like me... My guess is probably not a big percentage of the internet, but those of us who are into it really appreciate it!
SEND THIS MAN MORE JOB SITES
My neighborhood owned its own sewage lift station, and for decades we all fretfully squirreled away money to buy a replacement. Every so often the ancient pump would clog or break and the HOA would send out worrisome notices about the state of our Emergency Repair Fund. (The relic was an “Archimedes 1.0” model, if I wasn’t mistaken in my translation from the Greek, with a screw carved from a block of granite. It was powered by mules who had become too tired to ferry tourists up and down the Grand Canyon, and all the residents took turns feeding them through the day. It was a headache.)
Eventually we saved enough for a new lift station, and at the same time we got an amazing offer from the County. If we would buy a proper station, they would agree to take over operation and maintenance of it in perpetuity. It was a great deal all around. The County could be assured that everything connected to their plant was up to snuff. They could maintain it for far less money than we were spending. And we no longer lived under the threat of an extraordinary financial assessment if our old station conked out too soon. Also, we worried about the threat of a staggering sewage backup into our homes, as the closest connection to the County’s lines is up a pretty steep hill. You say “check valve”, I hear “poop flood”.
I got a close view during the construction of our new lift station. It was fascinating - but not nearly as interesting as your video series. I hope you’ll continue with these lessons in infrastructure.
As evidenced by me being a month late, I haven't been keeping up with this series too much, but I genuinely think it may be one of my favorites on the channel. It's getting to be holiday season which is moderately stressful, and the sheer joy I felt remembering this series and coming back to finish it was a godsend. Your videos have a way of making me be able to just relax and enjoy learning and thinking about new things about engineering and infrastructure I would have never otherwise appreciated or, sometimes, even noticed.
Also the vacuum + plastic bag trick made me laugh out loud and decide to offer my two cents because of how absolutely genius it was :) Thanks for the hours upon hours of wonderful content, Grady, and huge kudos to the contractors and workers allowing you to film something this in depth and educational!
I love the idea of one public utility charging another public utility for service.
This was an amazing series of videos! I'm a technical drafter, and it's so easy to forget how much work is needed to bring the lines I draw on a sheet to life!
As someone who works in wastewtmater treatment, I have huge respect for Practical Engineering for covering more mundane engineering topics such as this. Don't get me wrong, high tech renewable energy projects and megaprojects are beyond cool. But sometimes people don't realize how complex, and incredibly important to the environment and society, even "mundane" engineering projects are.
Last month I was tasked with modernizing a wastewater treatment plant for my last final exam necessary to get my electronics engineering degree. It's so cool to see how these things are actually built even if this is a small part of the entire wastewater treatment system. I had to put sensors, PLCs, actuators and orchestrate everything using SCADA, not to mention motor soft starters, protections and controls. This is a great series and I'm really grateful you took the time and effort to make it, thanks!
It is great coming into my office and seeing the little hardhat pin that came with the Engineering in Plain Sight book stuck on the wall. Confirms I'm supporting the right channel - this series was a great watch and I can't wait for the next one.
I really appreciate this series and would love to see it continue.
I worked as a commercial electrician in Houston and now I work with traffic systems in another state.
Seeing how the trades affect people in their everyday life is a wonderful thing to me, so thank you and your team for doing such a great job.