Stuart Haywood says: By the late 50’s the plant was receiving a dry weather flow somewhere in the region of 7.5 million gallons per day but with all 4 beam engines operating could only pump 5 million gallons per day up to the sewage farm, resulting in 2.5 million gallons of raw sewage being discharged into the River Trent per day. It was this that drove the decision to build the new sewage works at Clay Mills. However, because of the acidic nature of the sewage and high sulphide content, a small pilot plant sewage works was built adjacent to the pumping station. The work carried out on the pilot plant showed how corrosive the raw sewage was to modern concrete which led to most of the settlement tanks and filer bed walls on new plant being coated in either rubber or glass fibre. I have very fond memories of time spent with the 'engine driver' in the beam engine houses and once had the privilege of being allowed inside one the Lancaster Boilers to help with the descaling. On an interesting health and safety note, the safety footwear, still being used by the older workers on the steam plant in 1966, consisted of wooden clogs with horse shoes on the bottom!
By the late 50’s the plant was receiving a dry weather flow somewhere in the region of 7.5 million gallons per day but with all 4 beam engines operating could only pump 5 million gallons per day up to the sewage farm, resulting in 2.5 million gallons of raw sewage being discharged into the River Trent per day. It was this that drove the decision to build the new sewage works at Clay Mills. However, because of the acidic nature of the sewage and high sulphide content, a small pilot plant sewage works was built adjacent to the pumping station. The work carried out on the pilot plant showed how corrosive the raw sewage was to modern concrete which led to most of the settlement tanks and filer bed walls on new plant being coated in either rubber or glass fibre. I have very fond memories of time spent with the 'engine driver' in the beam engine houses and once had the privilege of being allowed inside one the Lancaster Boilers to help with the descaling. On an interesting health and safety note, the safety footwear, still being used by the older workers on the steam plant in 1966, consisted of wooden clogs with horse shoes on the bottom!