To reduce water pollution, current federal clean water regulations require sewerage systems to control the infiltration of stormwater into sewer lines during wet weather. To help control the amount of stormwater, sewage facilities often undergo routine inspections of sewer lines to ensure there are no cracks or leaks, also known as penetration testing. While this helps to locate and resolve issues, penetration testing can be time-consuming and expensive.
South Haven Sewer Company of Valparaiso, Indiana has implemented a cost-effective way to reduce the time and money spent on sewer inspections. According to company president David Thaler the company has been able to incorporate area lift stations, as large sump pumps to lift wastewater from ground level, and as flow monitoring stations.
"We know that by monitoring the operation of the elevator station pumps, we can learn a lot about flow rates and ultimately whether rainwater enters upstream pipes during rainfall or snowmelt," Seiler explained. Run-time monitoring, Seiler evaluates a range of products, from programmable logic controllers (plc) to dedicated motor run-time monitoring devices. While these products will perform adequately, most will require the use of computers at the elevator station site to collect data, and, in some cases, an additional current-sensitive module will need to be hard-coded into the elevator's electrical control system. Besides the high cost, these products have a steep learning curve, according to Thaler. This frustrates him about the total installation cost.
"One of the things I like to do," Seiler explained, "is to go out in my industry and learn about different products and technologies, and then bring them to what I'm doing. I happened to read an article in a magazine that used the data Loggers are used in frozen food transportation applications. Data loggers are used for continuous temperature monitoring. I did some research online for Onset data loggers and found that they also offer H06-001-002/ UX90-004, UX90-004M motor on on/off data logger. The cost seems to be right, and since the device is battery powered, we don't have to deal with any wiring issues."
Seiler chose Onset's HOBO H06-001-002/ UX90-004, UX90-004M motor on/off data loggers, which record on/off state changes, and electronically store time, date and status information for each change. The edit contains a microprocessor, an internal current sensor, and user-replaceable batteries into a compact, longer-lasting housing than a matchbox. There are only two H06-001-002/ UX90-004, UX90-004M installed close to the main conductors of the elevators to the pumps at each station. Collect data for each pump cycle. One week of data was retrieved by South Haven field personnel using HOBO. This handheld device can be offloaded and stored from each data logger, and then brought back to the office computer where the data can be plotted and analyzed using Emerge's Wagon Wagon Pro software.
He added, "For our application, the battery powered data loggers H06-001-002/ UX90-004, UX90-004M proved to be very cost-effective for our sense of runtime. Assure us, We follow clean water regulations, and that gives us a good approximation of how wet weather affects the flow collection system at a given point. Importantly, it helps us reduce inspection time and saves us a lot of money."
