Sewage Pumps

What Is a Sewage Pump?

Simply put, a sewage pump is a mechanism designed to transfer solid and liquid waste from one place to another – usually from your property into the proper available sewage system.

They are an ideal solution when gravity will not be able to carry your waste into the sewage system itself, like if you have a bathroom in a below ground structure like a basement, or if your property sits lower than the sewage system itself.

The sewage pump collects the sewage generated in a property, and then a trigger turns the pump on to move all of the waste into the sewer system, or a septic tank that is located above, or uphill, of the sewage pump.

You will find sewage pumps available to be used in one of three different modes. These modes are manual, automatic, and dual mode.

An automatic sewage pump is reliant on a float switch. This means that the pump will only work when the float switch is activated, emptying the sewage pumps collection tank once it reaches a certain level.

A manual switch is one that is plugged directly into a power socket, and needs to be turned on by the owner by hand. It’s never recommended to rely on a manual sewage pump alone, as there is a chance that it might overflow if you aren’t regular with its emptying.

Then you have dual mode sewage pumps. These pumps can run in either a manual, or automatic mode.

How Does a Sewage Pumps Work?

With the sewage pumps main function being to facilitate the movement of actual, raw sewage, it’s important that a sewage pump allows for solids to pass through its internal system without clogs occurring.

This happens thanks to the sewage pumps impeller. Once the pump is turned on, the motor rotates the impeller which creates centrifugal force. This force forces the wastewater into the impeller, breaking up the waste before ultimately discharging the waste into the sewer system, or a connected septic tank.

The Different Types of Sewage Pumps

Wondering what all these pumps do? Well, outlined below you can find the differences between the main three types of sewage pumps

Effluent Pumps:

This is the most commonly used sewage pumps in smaller properties and buildings, with the effluent pump not allowing solid waste to pass through.

Instead, the effluent pump tends to pump clearer liquids and waste due to the solids being broken down in the septic tank its connected to.

Because the effluent pump is not designed to break down solids, instead just pumping them, the effluent pump is much more efficient at pumping high levels of waste than other sewage pump systems.

Grinder Pumps:

Unlike the effluent pump, a grinder pump is equipped to grind and break down solid sewage. This sewage can then be pumped into the local sewer system safely and easily, without having to rely on a septic tank to further break down the waste.

A grinder pump acts a lot like a waste disposal grinder. The pump will cut and grind up solids within the sewage, before they are pumped away further into the sewage system.

Solid Handling Pumps:

Solid handling pumps, or sewage ejector pumps can pump away solid sewage without the need for grinding up the sewage first.

These pumps are fully capable of processing and pumping raw sewage to a connected sewer system or septic tank without grinding them up, and as a result do not have grinding mechanisms that could potentially break down.

What is the Difference Between a Sewage Pump and a Sump Pump?

A sewage pump, as we have described above, deals with wastewater and solid waste – raw sewage generally. Sump pumps however are designed to collect and safely channel away floodwater in a basement that has been collected by a basement waterproofing system.

This is the main difference between the two pumps, but there are other, smaller ones as well.

For example, the sewage pump as we mentioned is powered by a power socket alone, whereas a sum pump can be powered by the mains, a battery, or a combination of both to avoid breakdown in the event of a power cut.

You can read more about the differences between sewage pumps and sump pumps in our blog.