Customer solutions plus makes the news fighting a fatberg in Birmingham
Our team are currently tackling a huge 300-tonne fatberg in Hodge Hill in Birmingham, within our WINS contract with Severn Trent!
Fatbergs are caused by oil, grease, food, and wet wipes being flushed down drains, which eventually turns into a large gunky mess. These fatbergs do not usually break down on their own and must be tackled by our high-pressure jets to get the sewers flowing again.
During our work in Birmingham, we came across the biggest job we ever had to tackle, which goes underneath the M6! It was initially discovered when sewer flows in the area were noticed to be moving slower than their normal pace. Our initial visit was to try and restore the flow to enable the network to function at a normal capacity, which we successfully accomplished! Now our current task is to clear the fatberg which currently stands at 800 metres!
The biggest thing is getting at that pipe so that it is 7/8m deep, so we’ve had to dig a massive hole, or big trench to get at it. Now what the teams will do is use some really high-pressure water jets to break it up at little bit at a time.” Sarah O’Kane, Severn Trent
We as a team carried out a prompt response to tackle the issue at hand and did so safely and efficiently. The operatives on site carried out the HPWJ task and applied all the correct techniques to reach 750m mark from a single access point to restore the flow. Great show of character from our operatives” Marc Johnson, Operations Manager, Sapphire Utility Solutions