Sewage vs. Grinder Pumps

hey this is Steven here Nolan and in front of me I got a grinder pump and a sewage pump a lot of people confuse the two let's take a look at the differences so it's really not uncommon at all that somebody will ask for a grinder pump when they really just need a sewage pump they can important thing to note is that a grinder pump is not necessarily an upgrade to a sewage pump and they do have similarities but they work in a different way they're not really interchangeable alright so sewage pumps are most commonly used in situations say where you have a bathroom that's below the sewer line alright need to pump up to it or maybe you're pumping out to a up and out to a septic tank if you can't use gravity you need to use a pump to move that what are we moving well ideally only raw sewage so we're talking tallit paper and human waste and these are best in like low to medium head applications you're not pumping too high or too far so one key feature on the sewage pump is the two inch discharge all right and then if we flip this guy around looking underneath so the impeller it's got a big opening in the bottom a lot of free space alright between the bottom of the pump and the impeller so that means what a sewage pump can do is handle a two inch solid alright it's a two inch discharge two inch solid alright so looking at the grinder pump grinder pumps are bigger heavier and significantly more powerful than sewage pumps one of the reasons why is on the bottom they actually have a cutter wheel you could think of it like a powerful garbage disposal it's going to take everything that's pulled into that pump and chop it up grind it up into a slurry which then pumps out a smaller discharge you can see this discharge is going to be inch-and-a-quarter on your regular grinder pump alright it doesn't have to pass solids so it's chews things up it's able to have a smaller outlet that's a key feature of a grinder so there's really two applications where grinder pumps are meant for one is a high head situation art if you have to pump way up or way out and two would be if you have an uncontrolled environment maybe there's things that are getting flush you can't quite control the grinder pumps are often used in situations where you need high head let's say you have to pump a thousand feet out or you need to pump up say fifty feet another case would be is if you're feeding into a pressurized sewer may need to overcome the pressure of the sewer grinder pumps can pump further and faster and higher head situations so as far as uncontrolled environments ideally we'll only flush and toilet paper in human rate waste down the toilet but the reality is that often people flush these flushable wipes right so in that case we're talking about Lysol wipes we're talking about baby wipes maybe makeup remover pads they do go down a toilet but once they go down they often cause a bunch of issues like like clogging pumps blocking sewer lines so well you can imagine if you flush these things down and then you got a grinder pump the grinders gonna take them and grab them into a pulp alright so they can grinder pumps can handle these flushable wipes with that being said a grinder pump kind of sounds like a fix-all but here's the thing you really don't want a grinder pump unless you have to have reeds are number one there are about four times more expensive than a sewage pump and they can be a pain to own so grinder pump blades will dull over time you'll see videos out there of people doing demos and feeding like like a pair of jeans to a grinder pump and it will handle that but that is an expensive recipe that's just not something that you want to do grinder pump blades will dull if you're feeding at things that it really shouldn't be handling grinder pumps are also prone to clogging with stringing materials alright and because of that they clog up more easily they burn up more commonly because of that and ultimately don't last as long so grinder pumps they have their specific applications but we still want to be careful about what gets flushed and what we're feeding them okay so hopefully that helps give you an idea some of the similarities but probably more importantly the differences between grinder and sewage pumps if you like this please like and subscribe on YouTube and think for watching

Channel: Charlottesville Noland Plumbing & HVAC Supply

Views: 140,165

Keywords: Plumbing, Sewage Pump, Grinder Pump, Goulds, Zoeller, Xylem

Id: AtxgORGrIHo

Length: 4min 26sec (266 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020