The Largest Vacuum Sewerage System in the Southern Hempisphere

A vibrant masterplanned community is being established 25 minutes drive from Adelaide in South Australia. Lang Walker head of one of Australia’s largest developer’s Walker Corporation opened the new entrance to Adelaide’s newest suburb, Riverlea, last month.

The community will have 12,000 houses, and include three schools, large shopping and commercial centres. The whole area will be serviced by a Flovac vacuum sewerage system. A vacuum system was chosen due to the environmental benefits of installing a sewer system in an area that has a high water table. Less pump station infrastructure means lower power. The shallow pipework operating under a negative pressure means no risk of infiltration nor of any risks of sewage leaking out into the environment. Low Cost Flexibility.

The whole system will have the latest in wireless monitoring at every collection pit. You can read about the benefits here. This will allow SA Water to reduce their operational costs and risks. Predictive alerts, rain water sensors, pressure sensing and energy use will all be incorporated into the utilities SCADA as well as being fully available to operators and management via a cloud platform.

Vacuum sewer systems are often used in septic to sewer programs for existing towns. But we have also seen a big increase in their use by developers due to their environmental benefits and low cost installation. There is also the benefit of flexibility. For the first part of this project Flovac supplied a deployable vacuum pump station to provide service to the irst 200 houses prior to the main pump station infrastructure being built.