May the fat be with your rubbish – not down your drain

Lanes Group drainage engineers working for Thames Water have been battling in their very own ‘Fat Wars’ in the run up to Christmas.

A crack team of ‘Draintroopers’ have blasted a 20-metre-long fatberg in a sewer in Holborn, central London, weighing over five tonnes.

Using jets of water at 3,000 per square inch they pulverised the long slab of congealed grease, and sucked it from the sewer.

Their determined bid to roll back the forces that would otherwise block drains means businesses and residents along Leather Lane, which has a popular street market, will be safe from flooding this Christmas.

The victory for good sewer cleansing practice over evil came as a survey by Lanes Group revealed 68% people admit they would pour liquid fat down the sink this Christmas, rather than decant it, and place it in the kitchen bin.

Thames Water also says it expects the amount of fat poured in to sewers will increase by 25% over Christmas, threatening drains with enough fat to fill two Olympic swimming pools.

There, it will settle and fester in the dark, joining forced with those other evil of the sewers – sanitary items and wet wipes – to form more fatbergs.

It is why calling the fight against fat the Fat Wars, to borrow a phrase from the hit movie Star Wars, is so apt.

Water companies like Thames Water, supported by Lanes Group, are in a constant battle against bad practice in the disposal of fat.

The response by Lanes Group, Thames Water’s wastewater network maintenance provider, to the discovery of the fatberg under Leather Lane was led by Technical Specialist (Jetting Jedi) Calvin May.

He said: “Okay, it was a fatberg not a Death Star, but this is one of the biggest challenges we face. Fatbergs can cause a lot of misery for local people, and a huge amount of extra cost for Thames Water.”

Lanes Group’s utilities division deployed a JHL Superflex Recycler jet vac – think of it as a top-of-the-range Star Wars X-Wing fighter without the zappy light blasters – to take on the fatberg.

Calvin May explained: “We broke down the fatberg over two night shifts. The jet vac tanker had to be parked 80 metres from the blockage site.

“We fitted the jetting hose with a special ‘grenade bomb’ nozzle, and blasted the fatberg, which contained a large amount of wipes.

“The jetting hose was then used to drag the debris back to the jet vac vehicle where it was sucked up into its tank.

“Every couple of hours, a deep sewer confined spaces team went into the brick-lined sewer, which was 1.2m high, to check progress.

“We couldn’t use shovels to break down the fatberg by hand because that released hydrogen sulphide which set off our gas monitors, forcing us to leave the sewer.”

Thames Water’s fatberg awareness campaign calls for householders and businesses to ‘Bin it – Don’t Block It’.

Put another way: ‘May the fat be with your rubbish this Christmas’. It is a message that might help avoid more fatberg sequels.