How a Water Treatment Plant Eliminated Excessive Pump Maintenance

The Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant on the San Francisco Bay treats 20 million gallons of water daily. Five cities and Stanford University receive water from this plant. To better meet the needs of their customers, Palo Alto has been replacing their original hose pumps with Graco’s SoloTech peristaltic hose pumps.

The original Watson-Marlow hose and tube pumps were cost prohibitive to operate. Maintenance personnel were servicing pumps every 2 weeks because of continual leaking problems. These unscheduled outages caused delays in other projects. In addition to the leaking the pumps had tube tolerance issues which led to in consistent chemical dose rates.

To reduce chemical leaking and labor waste, Graco SoloTech pumps were phased into plant operations. There was an immediate impact. Following installation there were no leaks, repairs, other operational issues even after 6 months. Plant technicians said Graco’s multi-layer robust hose was a game changer.

SoloTech 10 pumps dose concentrated chlorine into the treatment process to ensure water is fit for human consumption.

The SoloTech 30 pump is backwashing 12 filters with sodium hypochlorite to prevent algae growth in water holding tanks. This single pump is providing the necessary chemical which used to take two pumps to accomplish