What should you expect when a packaged pump station arrives at site? The extent can depend on what project design you’ve agreed upon but in short, you’re receiving a prefabricated and tested pump station, with assembled components, ready to connect to existing water or sewer lines. Not only can this give you the peace of mind knowing that you’re getting a complete turnkey pump station from one manufacturer, but it also helps eliminate any scope gaps throughout the project. This helps lead to faster and more complete submittal and installation times from our experienced team of pump station professionals.
Packaged wet wells are shipped to site with all the mechanical components factory installed within the wet well. Both fiberglass and HDPE are monolithic structures, with superior durability allowing them to weigh less than concrete but meet the industry standards from a structural and buoyancy perspective. Concrete’s weight necessitates the wet well to arrive to the jobsite in separate rings that are then installed and sealed in the field. This makes it impossible to pre-install the piping, guide rails, support brackets, and mechanical components before it arrives to the job site. For fiberglass and HDPE, once they arrive to site, a contactor can typically install them using the excavation equipment already on-site.
We recommend HDPE wet well in designs that have a wet well diameter of 5 ft. or larger or in wet well depth deeper than 15 ft. As covered in our HDPE vs. Concrete blog, HDPE wet wells are inert to hydrogen sulfide (H2S) corrosion and have an 100-year design life. This is all without depending on any admixtures, interior coatings, joint wrap, or seals for wastewater or other corrosive applications.
Similar to HDPE, fiberglass pump stations are H2S resistant and arrive to site prefabricated with all the wet well internals installed. Fiberglass is a single wall structure, and different from HDPE which is a thicker profile wall for deeper burial depths. Fiberglass is ideally suited to smaller pump stations with a max depth of around 25 ft. It can be designed as a typical straight basin or with an integrated valve vault. The integrated pump station still arrives as a monolithic structure, just with the valve vault and wet well divided by an interior wall. Even with the valve vault, the structure can still be installed simply with the excavation equipment.
Packaging the controls and piping in an enclosure saves days, if not weeks of on site installation time. Additionally, factory install any electrical control panels or components (like SCADA, transfer switches, flow meter displays, etc.) that are necessary for the job. Furthermore, you get the peace of mind that the electrical components of a control panel are all tested, UL approved, and performance tested with the project specific pumps. This allows for a straightforward installation as per the design requirements.
Our standard NoVault pump station design eliminates the need for a separate below grade valve vault by bringing the valves and piping above ground in a structural aluminum climate controlled enclosure. As covered in our NoVault vs Conventional pump station design blog, the full access gull-wing doors allow for easy eye-level maintenance on either the piping and valve or control panel. It arrives at your site on a wood shipping frame that is easily removed and installed with most excavators, forklifts, or any other machinery rated to lift over 2,500 lbs. (for the NV2) and 3,500 lbs. (for the NV3 and NV4).
When designing water boosters or custom pump stations we typically suggest prefabricated pump station buildings. They generally give you more maintenance access and can house larger diameter piping (above 10 in. ductile iron) and more complex control panels when required. Once they reach the job site, a crane can be used to lift the building and place it onto the field installed foundation. All of our building solutions are design in compliance with the local code requirements and are provided with 3rd party P.E. structural calculations.
We hope those help solve what you should expect when you receive a packaged pump station. Check out our YouTube channel and subscribe for more videos on pump stations and updates within the pump industry. We also answered other frequently asked pump station build questions and cover Which Pump Station Design is Right for You. Have any additional questions about your next pump station project? Contact us today!