East Butterwick in North Lincolnshire lies on the east bank of the River Trent.

The village and surrounding countryside are protected from flooding by an automatically controlled pumping station which has been in operation since the Second World War, managed by the Messingham Internal Drainage Board.

The original equipment all those years ago included two self-priming pumps driven by diesel engines.

But in 1981 T-T PUMPS were successful in their bid to replace the outdated pumps with a new electric motor–driven submersible type housed in a new underground chamber. These new units were capable of delivering a design performance of 900 litres per second at a static head of 4.5 metres; in addition, the pumps were required to cope with static head values varying between zero and 7.5 metres.

For this task, T-T PUMPS selected equipment manufactured by the TSURUMI Manufacturing Company Ltd. of Osaka, Japan. One of the key requirements for this contract was that of reliability of operation. From the date of installation, the pumps proved so extremely dependable that T-T have never needed to provide any spare parts.

In 2004, the Drainage Board made the decision that after 24 years, the pumps had achieved their operation span, and as part of a planned maintenance schedule were to be replaced.

T-T PUMPS once more tendered for the provision of new pumps, in combination with a replacement motor control centre designed and produced by the Company’s T-T CONTROLS Division, and again made a successful submission. Their winning proposal was simple, to replace the old pump units with identical new ones, which were still available in the manufacturers’ product range after nearly a quarter of a century. This solution enabled the client to hold down costs, not only on the

mechanical components in the scheme, but also on the potential civil works, and in fact no modifications were necessary on this occasion to the pipework or to the structure of the pumping station.

As part of the revised programme, T-T PUMPS were asked to connect an electrically actuated penstock, to provide the Board’s supervisor with the facility to control gravity flows from West Common North Drain. This enabled local farmers to maintain invaluable irrigation on their fields during dry weather.
T-T PUMPS, JBA Consulting and the Board anticipate that the new pumps will provide a repeat of the highly successful operation of the original station, through correct design and equipment selection, innovative thinking, and by the application of considerable experience in realising the benefits of a planned maintenance programme.

Here’s to a further trouble-free 24 years of pumping!