From Commercial to Residential: How a Heavy-Duty Lifting Station Can Solve Your Drainage Challenges
Installing conventional plumbing in an existing structure often requires major construction. Costs and complications grow if your customer’s space is in an older building or a high-rise, where changing the plumbing infrastructure is difficult. To create below-floor drainage with conventional plumbing or sewage ejection, plumbers too often assume they have no choice but to pound through concrete. That means a messy, noisy, time-consuming job — and a higher cost to the owner.
Luckily, an above-floor drain pump system is an effective, cost-efficient alternative to time-consuming, labour-intensive trenching. Grinder plumbing systems offer convenience and cost-saving benefits. Unfortunately, when confronted with the above scenario, too many plumbers fail to consider the above-floor option — probably because they haven’t tried it.
Pre-assembled grinding pump systems are capable of discharging wastewater from multiple fixtures. No matter how big your project is, commercial or residential, above or below ground, a heavy-duty grinder pump offers a cost-effective alternative to trenching.
Consider SFA Saniflo’s Sanicubic range of lifting stations, powered by either one (simplex) or two (duplex) motors, buried beneath or installed on top of the floor, and equipped with alarm or without. The series offers two heavy-duty systems: grinder and vortex. Both allow for an easy-to-install, flexible installation — with clog-free discharge.
Sanicubic lifting stations are ideal for residential, commercial and even industrial applications in which the septic tank or sewer line is located either above or away from the structure, or where gravity flow is insufficient to move the waste. That’s because Sanicubic pumps the effluent up — not below the floor. As a result, there is no need to install conventional, below-floor plumbing drainage, a potentially expensive option in applications without such drainage.
As you will learn below, the difference between the two is in the way the pumps inside these systems handle drainage:
- The Sanicubic Series, offering simplex and duplex models, is a pre-assembled grinder designed to handle wastewater from multiple plumbing fixtures in a building. Featuring a one-horsepower motor, the Sanicubic 1 can pump up to 50 gallons per minute (GPM) from toilets, sinks, tubs and showers, dishwashers, washing machines, and much more throughout a structure. For bigger buildings, the Sanicubic 2 features two 1 one-horsepower pumps that will handle almost double the load: up to 90 GPM.
Made for uncontrolled environments, these high-performance systems can easily accommodate the accidental flushing of larger, problematic sanitary articles: feminine products, baby wipes, condoms, etc. Their fast-rotating, stainless steel cutting blades minimize the incidence of clogs by quickly reducing solids in the wastewater to a slurry that can be pumped up to 36 feet vertically and/or 328 feet horizontally through a 1.5-inch, rigid pipe.
Sanicubic 2: Installation below ground The Sanicubic Vortex Series (1VX and 2VX) also offers models with one pump (137 GPM from multiple fixtures) or two pumps (250 GPM). Engineered for highly demanding, rugged-duty, these pumps are equipped with an even more powerful, vortex-type impeller. This technology keeps solids away from the impeller as it turns, pushing waste rapidly through the pump and to the discharge pipe. By doing so, the possibility of clogging is substantially reduced, even while handling solids up to two inches in diameter.
Like the Sanicubic 1 and 2, Vortex lifting stations discharge waste up to 36 feet vertically and/or 328 feet horizontally, but using a 2-inch diameter pipe; or up to 20 feet through a 4-inch pipe. Featuring easily removable circular panels on top, the unit’s IP68 enclosure permits ready access to every major component inside. The benefit: easier and much cleaner servicing than conventional, below-floor systems whose maintenance can entail wading into a pit full of waste.
The Vortex Series employs an internal air pressure system for automatically cycling the unit on and off. This technology is far more precise than a conventional float, thanks to a fail-safe sensing mechanism.
Three pressure switches installed on the system’s internal dip tube detect the water level inside the enclosure. The unit also comes equipped with a wired control panel and an external audible and visual LED indicator alarm if a pump experiences overload or ceases to operate.
Both grinder and vortex Sanicubic Series lifting stations offer a lower overall lifetime cost than a conventional sewage ejector system once the expense of floor excavation, plumbing materials and labour, as well as the increased incidence of maintenance are all considered. That is why they have quickly become prime solutions for a wide range of residential, commercial and industrial plumbing drainage projects.
