Drivers rely on motorway rest areas and service facilities to ensure their comfort and safety on long journeys. However, for Austrian operator ASFiNAG, heavy use of these facilities was leading to maintenance headaches. Now, thanks to new grinders and pumps technology, ASFiNAG’s wastewater pump blockages are becoming a thing of the past.
ASFiNAG operates 87 fully-equipped service areas across Austria’s motorway network, offering fuel, food, toilets and washrooms, along with a further 55 rest areas equipped with showers and toilets. Often situated in remote locations, most of these facilities use their own sewage pumping stations to remove wastewater from site.
As standard, the company uses high pressure technology in these stations. Submersible grinder pumps break up solids and pressurize the wastewater before transporting it through small-diameter (DN50) pipes to the municipal wastewater network. The approach is a proven and cost-effective solution to the challenges of wastewater handling in places where conventional gravity sewer networks cannot be used.
Heavy Traffic
Over time, however, changes in customer behavior have created problems for ASFiNAG. While grinder pumps can handle wastewater reliably for many years with minimal attention, they can be blocked by large, sudden volumes of unconventional materials, such as wet-wipes or diapers. Furthermore, tougher items that cannot be shredded by grinder pumps collect in the sump over time. With more of these materials finding their way into the wastewater system at certain sites, the company’s maintenance teams were being called out almost every week to repair blocked pumps.
Lifting and clearing these pumps from the wet well of a sewage pumping station is costly, time-consuming work. Furthermore, with no effective way of dealing with the wastewater, ASFiNAG sometimes had no choice but to temporarily close the toilets at affected sites while repairs were undertaken.
Cutting Down to Size
