Lift Station Pump Sealing

By A. W. Chesterton Corporation

Lift stations or pumping stations supply wastewater to treatment plants. They are remote from the plant and are critical to the operation that many redundancies are built into each lift station to ensure they remain in operation, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These stations must be extremely reliable because the gravity flow coming into the lift station cannot be turned off!

Wastewater is a challenging material to reliably seal. Although the solids content of wastewater is around 1%, wastewater composition can vary widely dependent on the source. Virtually anything that can get inside a sewer system can travel to the lift station. Screens and comminutors will remove the larger debris items entering the pumping system and break up larger solids; however, pumpage to the lift station is highly variable.