There's always something that adds an unexpected twist to the day. I Met up with Toothdoctor, LittleMike & MrA to check out SSSI. Geared up, walked to the outfall, and pretty much walked through a wasps nest, it wasn't pretty. Everyone pulled together and rallied against the little bastards, saving my bag and making a clean get away, all's well that ends well. And it did, we popped a manhole and headed in a bit further upstream.
SSSI has a big overflow chamber, with a big ass penstock and control room. The smell of crap was just the anaesthetic the stings needed, so we took a few photos and headed out.
SSSI was upgraded in 2014 by means of a large screened CSO chamber around half way down the outfall culvert.
A chamber diverts flow down a new concrete box section to the screening room where penstocks could send the flow to either or both screens.
In the chamber above a grilled floor gave access to the various bits of machinery
A scavenger pump located in a well after the screens pumped water up into the screens to wash away any solids that had been filtered out.
Screened flow is then diverted back into the original culvert. The section of culvert between the two new diversion chambers is maintained as an emergency bypass. Presumably fail open penstock will be installed in the upstream chamber although at the time of visit the place it would go was just jam rag covered rebar.
