Purpose Built Trailer
By Moore Engineering
The Sturt Unit was successful in applying for a Grant through United Way South Australia, for the purchase of a high volume/low pressure pump fitted to a purpose-built trailer, complete with all of the necessary hoses and fittings. This will give Sturt and SES an excellent resource that we can take to major flooding jobs.
The project took nearly 12 months to complete and we spent along time designing the trailer and pump system, combining our ideas of what we wanted to achieve, with the practical ideas on how to do it coming from Quentin Moore, Andrew Geue and John Osmond from Moore Engineering, who did a great job in building it.
For those interested in the technical details, the pump is an industrial pump capable of pushing through 2400 litres of water every minute (or 144,000 lt/hour), and it will handle solids e.g. dirt and stones, up to 35mm. It has a 100mm suction inlet and two 64mm outlets. A special anti-vortex suction head will allow pumping in just a few centimetres of water. The trailer has been built for use in floodwater if required, and is manufactured from aluminium tread plate with the frame made from steel and hot dipped galv. It is designed so we can tow it straight into the water, lay out hoses, and start pumping immediately. It has a removable “pod” with the pump mounted on it. This allows setting up the pump at a suitable location, winding down four legs, and driving off with the trailer to get sand or sandbags.
The pod will have its own electrical system that provides power to the electric start and electric primer for the pump. Power is also required for the two gas discharge working lights mounted on extendable poles, and the red and blue flashing lights. There are two separate fuel tanks, which fill the fuel tank on the pump motor via an automatic fuel pump system. This should provide enough fuel to run the pump for nearly a day.
The pod has two lockers. One will house 200 meters of lay-flat hose and a variety of fittings so we can work with MFS and CFS equipment if necessary. The other is to store sandbags. There are also compartments that house suction hose, shovels, brooms, rolls of plastic and our sandbag filling frames.
The Sturt Unit invited Ms Sioux Christiansen, Executive Director of United Way South Australia, Regional Commander Central Region John Thorne and SHQ staff, Richard Coombe, Bob Stevenson and Peter Nygaard and Judith Bleechmore, to view the pump and trailer. As SES is now officially the Lead Agency for flooding operations, we believe this piece of equipment will be a major part of our frontline operations, although more of these units are required for major flooding situations like the Virginia floods.
The Sturt Unit would sincerely like to thank Ms Sioux Christiansen and United Way for their support of our Grant Application.
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