Yorkshire Water launches project to reduce sewer flooding

Yorkshire Water have begun a project to reduce the risk and impact of sewer flooding in homes and the local environment.

The utility company will be installing 35,000 Technolog customer sewer alarms at properties across Yorkshire.

The move follows a successful pilot project of 5,000 devices in Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Doncaster, which won the Institute of Water North Region Innovation award.

Once installed, the customer sewer alarms will monitor the water level within the combined sewer gullies using a pressure sensor which sends an alert remotely when an increase in level is identified. The devices use a wireless network to enable Yorkshire Water teams to identify trends in how the sewers are performing.

This will allow Yorkshire Water teams to quickly analyse, identify and proactively respond to increases in sewer levels which are often signs that precede sewage escaping the network onto streets or into people’s homes. Increased levels in gullies can indicate potential blockages or damage within the sewer network which are restricting flow.

Henry Dixon, business transformation manager at Yorkshire Water, said: “This project represents a significant investment and forms a key part of our ambition to increase the technology in operation across our network. The devices will provide vital insight into the performance of the network, allowing our teams to monitor flows and understand network performance remotely.

“Our successful pilot project helped to prevent sewer flooding in homes and gardens, improved our customers’ experience by alerting us to blockages before they caused a problem and saved time and cost on our Customer Field Services visits by attending proactively to resolve problems before they caused flooding.

“The expansion of the project will ensure we can quickly identify potential problems and mobilise our teams to investigate the network before there is an impact on our customers and/or the environment across Yorkshire.”

Luke Thornton, business development director at Technolog Group, said: “We have been working collaboratively with Yorkshire Water for over three years, in the development and fine tuning of this product and service offering.

“This project is testament to Yorkshire Water’s ambition and commitment to significantly reduce internal and external flooding issues for their customers.”

For more information on the project visit the Yorkshire Water website