The City’s Minges Brook Pump Station O-15 was originally constructed in the late 1960s and had outlasted its useful life cycle. Jones & Henry was tasked with designing pump station improvements with the goal of bringing the station to current City standards and adding additional reserve capacity/providing additional response time.
The station’s current arrangement is a wet pit/dry pit configuration with three (3) Allis Chalmers shaft driven centrifugal sewage pumps. The City required Jones & Henry to provide a solution that would allow for increased response time in the event of an emergency. After presenting a few alternatives, it was determined that the best way to provide the most additional response time was to reconfigure the station into a fully submersible pump station.
This would be achieved by removing the center wall between the wet pit and dry pit, turning the entire below-grade footprint of the station into one large wet well. The result would be an increased usable wetwell volume more than three times the original capacity.
Jones & Henry performed a flow study during the Summer of 2020 to determine the appropriate firm pumping capacity of the station. As a result of that study, the rated capacity could safely be reduced from 1900 gpm down to 1300 gpm. The reduction will provide a significant power savings while reducing start/stop wear and tear on the new pumps.
SCADA upgrades were also included in the design which will increase operational flexibility.
Since the pump station is located in a residential area, the site conditions were a consideration. The ability to completely remove the existing building was fundamental to improving aesthetics. The new station, while much lower in profile, will also be shrouded with new landscape trees to further improve the neighborhood.
