A grinder pump is an enclosed mini wastewater pump station on a homeowner's property that the town is responsible to maintain. Effluent is stored in a tank until it reaches 30 gallons of effluent. When that level is reached, the content of the tank is pumped to the street and then pushed into the gravity system. Grinder pumps require periodic replacement and do not work in the absence of electric power. When a grinder pump fails, homeowners do not have sanitary facilities.
Homeowners with gravity feed systems do not require pumps to feed into the sewer system and are unaffected by power outages. At the beginning of the sewer project every effort was made to ensure homeowners could tie in with a gravity system. At the end of the sewer project many homeowners were forced to have grinder pumps as the system is less costly to install. The Town then placed the burden of maintaining the pumps onto the homeowners while the town maintained all aspects of the gravity system. The unfairness of this initiated the founding of the Sewer Fairness Alliance. |
Grinder Pump Survey Please fill out the short grinder pump repair survey using the button above whether or not you have had a failure. It is just as important to record non-failures as well as failures. Survey updates will be sent out every 10 additional submissions. You may redo the survey, if there has been a change since the last. The two responses will be merged.
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Website, Pat McGahan,
patricia.mcgahan01@gmail.com 413-337-4078, 978-987-6899 |
Group Email
SFA-Chelmsford@GoogleGroups.com |