Sewage pumps are an important tool in the preservation and maintenance of city and town sewers. Usually the small scale kind of sewage clearance is achieved using pumps that are submerged under the sewage water. Back in the 1960’s the underwater sewage pump was the ‘fashionable’ new toy that had come along just at the right time. Until that point, men were sent down into the sewer pipes to manually clear and clean any blockages and that was a smelly, dirty and very unpopular punishment, rather than a job. The growth in the business of submergible pumps happened very quickly and now they are used more or less the entire time. Pumps are placed on a guide rail that they can be lifted out of the water and above the level for cleaning and reparation.
Applications and Uses
Domestic style submersible pumps are usually able to deal with anything up to about two inches or so. Three inches is about the maximum for mid-range submersible pumps and after that come the chopper pumps and the industrial strength artillery. Some sewers are large enough for not only a person to walk through but some heavy machinery too. Many sewers have the width to allow for such machinery because they are major arteries in the entire sewage system of a major city or large town and if they become blocked or something happens, they must be accessible so that they can be cleared. Oftentimes it is the job of police to walk through sewers to trace evidence that could have been tossed into a street drain or storm drain by a suspect. In those cases, without the width and depth of the sewer pipes it would not be possible to scour the waters for lost debris or thrown away weapons. Many a time a gun or knife has been retrieved from such places, and found to be the murder weapon in a criminal case.
It is possible, but doubtful that sewage pumps in Brighton will ever have been used in a murder investigation, but it is possible that they may have been used in cases where a home or drain has been flooded and the waters need to be removed so they can recede.