HEAVY CONSTRUCTION of a Sewage Pump Station - Ep 5
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ต.ค. 2023
- The series finale of the new wastewater lift station. Hope you've enjoyed the ride!
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Practical Construction Playlist: • Practical Construction
This is the final episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's Made"-esque heavy construction videos, so let me know what you think! Got an idea for an episode? Share it here: practical.engineering/location
Huge thanks to our project partners!
Owner: San Antonio River Authority (@SanAntonioRiver)
Engineer: Utility Engineering Group
General Contractor: MGC Contractors (@mgccontractors3304)
Practical Construction is a TH-cam channel dedicated to the built environment. The show builds on the success of @PracticalEngineeringChannel , one of the largest engineering channels on TH-cam, with more than 3 million subscribers and monthly viewership in the millions. Hosted and produced by civil engineer Grady Hillhouse, Practical Construction videos provide thoughtful and engaging explanations of how the world is built (and maintained) around us.
Credits:
Created by Grady Hillhouse
Edited by Wesley Crump
Camera Operator Josh Lorenz
Script Editing by Ralph Crewe
Graphics by Max Moser
Music by Donovan Bullen
Color Correction and Blurring by the Nebula Studios team
Some music from Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Huge thanks to everyone who made this possible! Producing this series was an adventure.
If you love infrastructure as much as I do, you might like my book or Infrastructure Road Trip Bingo (or both at a discount!): store.practical.engineering/
Now they just need some solar collectors, a camera and a battery to drive all the small stuff to be able to overbridge small power failures.
I LOVED this series!!! I REALLY hope you continue with it... and it ABSOLUTELY belongs on this channel!!! This is the end result of what the engineers start on paper, so it's part of the engineering process. ( perhaps the making of some of the parts that engineers require would also be a series for the future of the channel?? i.e. "How Its Made: Grady Hillhouse Edition" lol )
- The only thing I would want to see added to the series if you continue with it is a bit more of an overview of what is being done, how the system is laid out, the different parts of the system, etc..... (I dont think this explains what I really mean) ... maybe in the first episode you could have a graphic that gives an overhead view of how the original station did its job or what this work was aiming to achieve ... but maybe that's just a personal preference and I'm nit-picking... I think you did a WONDERFUL job and I hope you continue to make more great content in this series :D
Awesome series!! I would love to see more!
Brady,
How much did this installation cost?
amazing series! here's to hoping for more.
I love all your videos. your style of presentation is above the rest... in a whole other level!
again thank you for the great content
The most amazing thing of this series is having the contractor on board with being filmed all the time and the videos made public! Props to them for being confident in their work.
Right? Imagine doing a dumb thing by accident and having that exposed to the whole world forever 😂
@@TheNerogardenever heard of approval and editing
@@jayathranps1319 For sure. But not everybody will review the footage.. so that require a lot of trust by the engineers on site
MGC was such a good sport about this idea. They were terrific to work with.
18 years an electrician and my current job has an automatic firing policy if your phone is seen out of your pocket, even to check the time, for security reasons. So yeah, very surprised. I've done 3 water treatment plants but no pumping stations. A lot of this was very familiar to me. Great series
As a long-time subscriber I'd like you to know that this was my favorite thing you've done to date. You did a really fantastic job. I would absolutely love to see more real world projects like this. I appreciate that you took advantage of your unique position to share this with the world. Keep up the good work.
I'll second these sentiments wholeheartedly. My interest in the engineering of civil projects like this one is intense, but not capable of withstanding the maths of most "explanations." You've done such a good job with this I feel I can't give enough praise. Whatever else you decide to treat in this manner will surely be a success.
Absolutely. This has been such an informative and interesting series. Easily his best work.
Second
I have been subscribed for 2 years and i totally agree! Definately enjoyed this series! Do more of these if you get the opportunity
I second that
I think anyone who made it to episode 5 can say they thoroughly enjoyed this series. While a second channel might sound like a good idea, I watched your 8 months of work in two days. I don't think content could keep up unless you had a separate team. Either way, your dream of watching a construction site is shared by many, and we look forward to watching much, much more. Thank you, Grady, and everyone behind the camera.
As a certified wastewater plant operator, I am just tickeld to see you present something I deal with daily. Thanks!
Turd herder.
Speaking of, I was down by the Oshawa/Whitby Waterfront trail here in the GTA and got to see some of the Waste water treatment.
Over here the seaguls really liking sitting around the spinny water things.
I was joking with dad "Maybe they're pecking corn out of our poop"
@nekomasteryoutube3232 could have been a clarifier, that is wastewater that has been screened so hopefully no corn in it. 🙂
May you spend many days dealing with the dry part, and few dealing with the wet part.
This is the type of documentaries I really enjoyed as a kid, but seem to have disappeared.
No fake drama, no bullshit, just pure information. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
You continue to be one of my absolute favorite TH-cam channels.
As in, a documentary. It's a shame how the idea of an actual documentary has been lost to many over time.
What?! You don't like the blippety-boop computer sounds on the Discovery channel and gadgety visual gimmicks?😮
This series was amazing. It is the latest proof that we don't need big cable channels and high-paid actors to produce highly compelling, informative, and entertaining shows. The world needs to see more episodes like this. We need to show the next generation that working jobs like this is pretty amazing. They can help make the world a better place.
I’m in the Water and Waste Water industry. I know for a fact your videos are shown to new grads and new employees to help familiarize themselves with different aspects of the water cycle/system. Fantastic content.
Wow! That's amazing!
I work in IT and one of our customers is a local river authority. About a year or so ago I got to go on site to the 7.5 MW hydroelectric power plant in order to troubleshoot remote access to their SCADA unit. I was hardcore geeking out the entire time over all of the massive engineering in that facility, and I got all the pictures to show for it! And the entire time I was eagerly telling my hosts all about your channel!
The plant I saw can produce up to 7.5 MW with flow rates up to 810 cubic feet PER SECOND.
If you ever get the chance to do a Practical Construction series on hydroelectric power, PLEASE TAKE IT!
And if you wanna see my local power plant sometime, hit me up, I might be able to arrange a tour. I'm not in Texas, but you might enjoy a vacation a little further north ;)
I work in IT too, but never touched SCADA systems. I'm honestly inspired to see how difficult it might be to retrain and do a bit of a sidestep in my career. I've mostly managed Windows servers, but I miss running cable and hardware with everything in datacentres these days.
Well, for a hydroelectric plant, the series might be out only in 5+ years if he starts filming right now... So this might be a bit out of reach 😅
@@nankinink it just means playing the long game ;) Also, in this case, the dam was preexisting, so the hydroelectric plant was an add-on and the plant itself could go up a bit faster than building an entire reservoir from scratch.
Sad to see this series to end, one of the best documentary projects here. Everything was so interesting and we got nice explanation for it. Really liked it, i hope you get the opportunity to make more of these
I too hope more like this will follow on other projects, especially now that this first series proves the concept. And besides, having the series end as planned is better than having "Episode 15: Dealing with a fallen crane and pump equipment reclamation"
Loved the series!! It's my dream that folks like you replace the magic that Discovery and The History channels created but abandoned. Keep up the great work and I'm hoping more people like me appreciate your motives. Looking forward to the next series and learning more about how our world is built.
This is undoubtedly batter than a bunch of bickering "gold hunters"!
I work at Val-Matic, the company who supplied some of the plug and check valves on this project, and this is becoming a training tool for our new Sales Engineers. Haven’t sent anyone describe the construction of a plant as well as this series!
My dad was a field technician for the local water company. He was the guy who'd drive out there at 3am when the red light starts flashing, with a pair of waders in the car just in case. He'd have loved how maintainably designed this station is!
The endorsement fron an experienced person like 🎉 your dad always matters.
I can never understand why the Shone system developed in the mid 19th century is not used today. With no moving parts on the water side (except the non return valves) many of these systems are still running today, after more than 100 years of 24/7 operation. They were developed when buildings in London (UK) were below the Thames, and hence the sewers. The houses of parliament, better known for Big Ben, were one of the early installations that is still running today. Between 1909 and 1026, they were incorporated into several London theatres.
When I visited the Becton treatment plant, that has to lift the sewage from a sewer large enough to drive a single decker bus through, I explained them and they were gobsmacked at their simplicity and lack of any pumps. No one on the design team had even heard of the principal.
If it is not something that you have come across, I am happy to explain it and how unbelievably simple and maintenance free it is by eliminating pumps that can block and wear.
Truly incredible series. Practical Engineering "single"-handedly revived an entire extinct genre of television.
Facts.
It is so important to a cohesive society that we all appreciate what each other does by getting to see some of the detail like this. This used to be a cornerstone of television entertainment both for children and adults alike; fantastic for inspiring the young. This benefit through this type of educational media goes mostly unappreciated and yet it is so important for increasing the levels of day to day respect between people and is a reminder to value our collective knowledge base. Thank you, Grady.
Definitely my favorite series. You've grown into an incredible educator. It's rare to see jobs like this with the type of explanations you give. Great Job. Keep it up!
I agree 😊
The vacuum fishing for wire is always a treat to show people who haven't seen it done.
The complexity of common services we take for granted is mind-boggling
This was easily the best mini documentary series of the entire year! If you find any other opportunities like this one I am definitely going to watch that series.
Love these, would love to have more - this is what TLC and Discovery channel used to be - super interesting deep dives into the world around us. I watched it growing up and I'm watching you as an adult. Really well done too, the editing and descriptions were perfect.
Honestly, this is better produced than those old documentaries. Great work here.
Reminds me of one of my favorite shows, “How its made”.
@@bobthecomputerguy they might been inferior but at least "on brand" and not repulsive Stuff today
As soon as this series started I thought to myself (in Italian): “Finally a web series for ‘umarell’!”. It was so unexpected hearing the term cited in this video, and I was sooo pleased with it.
I know you said this series hasn't been super popular by the numbers. But it has been my favorite you've done!
Loved this series. As an engineer and water/wastewater operator in Texas I have used this series to show friends and family what it is that I do. I have also used this series as a learning tool for interns and new to the industry employees. I would love to see the other heavy civil construction videos include water/wastewater plant work, drilling of a well, construction of an EST, roadwork from a design, bridge construction or repair, etc. LOVE YOUR WORK!!
Thanks for this series, Grady! I've been a water/wastewater process design engineer for 15 years, and it's really cool to see something I do every day documented for the world to see and understand a little bit better. More importantly, I hope many kids will see videos like this and get interested in pursuing careers in the design, construction and operation of civil infrastructure.
Grady as you know there is no shortage of engineers / engineering videos on TH-cam. But your narrating and your voice on top of your knowledge is miles ahead of anyone on this platform . Bravo sir bravo 👏
Grady, I do industrial design, engineering, and construction for a living. Not only do I love what I do but your common sense approach to your videos helps me communicate to others what I do for a living. Now when I say that I’m an Engineer….they don’t ask what type of train I drive!!!!
This series should be a required course in public school. So many people don't understand or appreciate modern infrastructure. And it would probably get a bunch of kids interested in engineering or other civil services.
I understand the kind of additional stress this kind of a project can put on a crew, but I also feel like a continued series like this would do a lot of good to further the public's understanding and appreciation of large scale infrastructure projects.
About a year ago, I started welding stainless pipe for lift stations, but I've never seen how the parts I made are used. It is massively satisfying & fun to understand the full application and use of the things I make every day! This has been a great series, and I can't wait to see others like it.
The way they snaked that wire with the vacuum and bag was so clever!
Honestly, seeing an independent creator (you're not an education company and super well-funded) is absolutely phenomenal.
This kind of thing should be absolutely shown in school, from hs/middle school and college for classes that are meant to expose people to complexities.
Your script, editing, and information was amazing, and despite me being a web software developer, this was incredibly interesting and very easy to grok. Very well done, and I truly appreciate the authorities, contractors and workers for allowing you to film. Really. This is amazing work, and is some of the coolest content I've seen, and even goes against modern marvels.
Absolutely invaluable work, and shows / commemorates all the hard work everybody puts into those kind of civil projects. I hope the individuals who allowed this to happen see this comment, and realize how impactful this kind of thing really is -- even for people not in the industry. I look forward to new series and learning about things that go unseen, and unappreciated by so many people.
Random french watcher here. Greatly appreciated the series and would definitively love to see more on the channel (I think it does belong here and not on a separate one). As for the other questions I'm sorry I can't help further with that lol. Anyway Grady thanks again for all the work you've been putting on! This is definitively the most interesting channel about construction I've even found (and I've been watching for over 2 years now).
This was a fantastic series. I like that it's on the main Practical Engineering channel, but would also be fine with subscribing to a separate channel just for construction projects. From the editing to the music to your brilliant narration, this really has been a joy to watch. That it was done in 4K was a great bonus, thanks for that.
This entire series honestly felt like I was main-lining 96 hours of pure Canadian "How It's Made".
The final product was mind-blowing, I could watch this over and over, thank you for making such a socratic masterpiece. 👏. Great job! 👍
This series has been extremely satisfying, I hope you'll continue! There has to be a more efficient way to get all this done. I feel like manufacturing the wells as single pieces, with plumbing connections included, would save weeks and millions of dollars.
Although I like the idea... I don't think this solution would be cheap for all the different types of infrastructure.
It's a lot cheaper to make a lot of the same pipe in a factory vs making specific, custom-made wells
@@mrping2603 I also feel like the separate-piece construction could deal with settlement, seismic events, etc better
Lots of smaller lift stations come prebuilt like you said, but not at this scale. It took 6 semi trucks just to deliver the wet well segments!
you underestimate the cost of hiring a custom haul truck to move something that is too big to haul over the road. and the cost of renting a crane big enough to lift that entire thing all at once. you're talking about weeks in transit and millions of dollars in transit costs.
@@kenbrown2808 The other day I saw a convoy of way oversized stuff and they had to have a police escort and like 20 lead vehicles/follower vehicles. The entire interstate was piling up behind them. I think they were carrying what looked like rocket parts potentially, large cylinders two end capes, and the cylinders had a lot of attachment points/small pipes. I only shudder at how much that must have cost.
Ive been in heavy construction for 18 years. Thank you for shedding light on us! What an amazing job you did making this mini series. By far my favorite as a long time subscriber. Everything from the production quality to the caliber of work put out by the contractors you filmed was absolutely outstanding. Much respect to everyone involved.
I want to echo the previous comments. Especially Dork432. This is the best stuff in the world to watch. It makes me appreciate all the hard and yet critical little steps, like how they left the epoxy coating a bit short of the bottom of the wet well, then when all the pumps and stuff were indexed, bowled the bottom with concrete , then finished coating then installed the pumps and lines. The order of processes is so critical! Way to help us understand all the hundreds of processes that go into a project like this. I really hope you can find more projects to document.
I've worked for an engineering firm (CDM Smith) for almost 2 decades, but in an IT support capacity. This series has been enlightening as it shows what my co-workers do every day to plan and install such systems around the world.
This is easily the coolest series on youtube. Its so in depth but also offers a macroscopic view of how urban utility development is always in a race to stay ahead of demand
I have to say, that method of pulling the wires with the bag and vacuum is absolutely great, I love it.
I'm retired now but I saw many interesting motor control systems. At first I started out with systems in bakeries such as moving flour or sugar using an air blower from silos to weighing hoppers. There are continues systems and batch systems. This description is for batch systems. The hoppers dumped the weighed product into large mixers that made sponge dough that was dumped into large tubs. After the sponge raised then it was dumped into a dough mixer. The mixed dough was placed in large tubs that were used to dump the dough into a bread former that dumped dough into bread pans. The pans went into a proofer to raise the bread, then into an oven to bake the bread, followed by a spiral bread cooler, then into a bread slicer, a bagger, and conveyors to move the packaged bread to trucks.
Another interesting project I worked on was a copper wire shredder that had a conveyor to put the wire into the top of the shredder. I remember they had a large coil of small wire that had misaligned insulation. They spread out the wire so that not all of it would drop into the top of a shredder. Once the shredder gabbed the first of the wire it quickly pulled in all the rest of the wire stalling the shredder. I bet they didn't do that again. The shredded wire came out of the shredder very warm and was placed on a vibrating conveyor that moved the wire to a vibrating separator that moved the insulation one way and the bare copper the other way with wire still in insulation of varying degrees between the two.
Later years I worked on baggage handing systems. Most flying passengers are familiar with a conveyor behind ticket counters that move baggage through the wall into the back, That's where hired gorillas throw bags back and forth until the baggage has an acceptable used look to them. OK, the gorillas are conveyors that were designed to catch straps so some bags can slide on a conveyor for hours until they have an acceptable black burn or until another bag shows up and rips off the strap. The conveyors were also designed to rip off zipper pullers (I have a great collection of them). Sometimes passengers check what I call rolly-polls (look like bowling balls). They act like red light runners at merges and like run-a-way trucks going downhill. We all love them and wish there were more of them to keep us on our toes. The bags are then sent to the local claim device so that they will be late getting to the final destination or better yet they become lost bags and can be used as test baggage when a new baggage handling system is tested. One time I saw a maintenance employee riding down a declining conveyor that came from the ticket counters. Boy did he get in trouble. Those were fun days working nights for a few weeks and then getting to go home where everyone was on days.
A whole year to make 5 episodes! I appreciate the dedication you have to this new series!
Love to see the quality infrastructure that hard work produces! Thanks for giving us an inside scoop on all the details! I'd love to see more like this
You forgot to ask the cost! ;-)
@@marcteenhc9793Cheap isn't good. Good isn't cheap.
@@pootispiker2866 Cheaper for the same quality is always better. Specially if tax-payers' money is involved.
@@marcteenhc9793 Cheaper for the same quality doesn't exist in the real world. It might on spreadsheets and specification lists. If a project is cheaper, its quality must suffer. Things don't get double checked or a slightly out of spec but still in compliance material is used.
Safety margins aren't there for you so you can save money. They're there to keep you safe. Look to China to see what happens when you "save the taxpayers money." Do you think safety checks are done for free?
Honestly this series gave me some nostalgia from when I was a teen and watched How It’s Made, Modern Marvels and Extreme Engineering. Granted, Dirty Jobs and SurvivorMan were also some of my absolute favorite shows to watch as well.
As an 80 year old "umarell" this series was great. I think programs like this should be interspersed with other Practical Engineering offerings. You do good work, Grady!
Beautifully done series. Honestly, this series will be a resource for many in years to come. Great for showing folks what happens with these products and how it all ties together into a much larger system. As an engineer in the municipal valve world it was cool to see the whole process continually, as you often only see bits of it in our position. Even if it was a competitors product installed. ;) Thanks for keeping a true and tied technology documentary art form alive.
It would've been cool for you to highlight the differences between the sides of the station. I would like to know when the first side was constructed and then highlight the changes in technology like the diesel backup pump which was clearly newer and different.
I'm with everybody else here.... I love this content.... is the essence of old school documentaries.... no nonsense and no algorithm clickbait BS... I would love to see it here, but if this is what Nebula is about am up...
The number of steps and the forethought behind every inch of pipe and every pound of concrete (and many different *kinds* of concrete) is nothing short of mind blowing.
This is one of those parts of our modern life in an industrialized society to which 99.999% of us never give a second thought, and that absolutely 100% requires an extraordinary confluence of many engineers' and builders' expert knowledge to even be possible.
In the case of an End Of The World As We Know It scenario, the survivors would need decades or even centuries to be able to build something like this again.
I hope you make more of these in the future along with your usual content. Your channel has given me an appreciation for all the infrastructure around me that was previously unnoticed.
This series was extremely well done, and totally has its place on an engineering channel. In future series, I'd love to see probably a tad more schematics about how the whole thing fits in the wider picture, and how all the things are interconnected, because being lost in the details of concrete pouring made me lose track of the bigger context. Basically, a bit more balance on explaining the "why" with the "how".
Every civil engineering student in America should be required to watch this series and all of your content
These are the people that keep our modern civilization running. Hats off to them.
my husband is a land surveyor and hes really enjoyed the series so far! its been funny listening to his comments and perspectives on how yall do things compared to what he sees here in the DC/MD metro area 😂
Thank you Grady and everyone involved, this was pure joy to watch! I hope you get to do this a whole lot more, and can't wait to see it!
I’m a CAD drafter at an engineering firm and I found this series fascinating and very educational
I'd be interested to see the construction of huge harbor equipment. I used to work in a tank farm in Houston/TX and still live in a harbor city, so anything like that would really spark my interest and is likely interesting to more people. Talking about tank farms, ship loading terminals and the terminals to further distribute goods via rail, truck, etc.
The scale of these projects is fascinating. Thanks for creating this, would like to see more.
This series was fantastic and I absolutely want to see more. I don't think it needs a separate channel at all really.
Great video! As a potable water plant operator, the majority of your video is also incorporated on drinking water as well. SCADA, transducers and redundancy measures are extremely similar. Difference is we use powerful motors to extract water from underground aquifers and treated into clearwells where chemicals are added and sent out to community either by booster pumps or elevation tanks.
YES I wanna see more of this, I've always loved watching construction, PLEASE make more of these! My favorite series on the channel!
The way the pumps are installed and so easily serviced is amazing. Love when things are designed for smooth maintenance from the start.
How exactly do those work? I couldn't really figure out where the water goes through them
Thank you Grady! This series has been cool for so many reasons. Most obviously, it's so high quality, and you and your team's passion sing through your work. Everyone can see how much you love this topic and getting to talk about it, which is truly the best. Plus, I do video production on worksites (nothing at this scale) and the coordination on this must have been insane. Incredible work, especially learning as you go!
Less obviously, I work with a lot of public workers and their work, and the infrastructure they work with and maintain is so invisible to all of us. Despite literally everything we do depending on them and our infrastructure, they are often ignored, berated with stereotypes about government workers and civil engineering projects, have their budgets cut and are always asked to do more with less. So highlighting how complex and difficult building this stuff is is really important, I think.
Thank you!
Kudos to all for allowing us to watch your hard work bringing this sewage pump station online. Fascinating for this retiree! Future projects? How about design, layout, roughing in a new housing subdivision to include water, fire hydrants, sewage, electrical, internet, roadways, basements/slabs, housing, etc., to occupancy? Also fascinated with water towers/pumps, power substations, highway/bridge construction to include sensors for smart travel monitoring. I find that young people who go from an apartment to their first house seldom know how their house works. When a sump alarm goes off or GFCI outlet trips, they have no clue how to get things going again. You could provide a much needed public service, I believe.
Absolutely fantastic series! Every time I go on break, I sit in my car and watch. Please keep this series alive, man!
Nothing makes me happier than to login to TH-cam and see a new video from Grady. This construction project was one of the best things he's done. I've watched plenty of construction documentaries but they usually focus on the architect and maybe briefly cover some of the bigger challenges faced during construction. They always leave me with a ton of unanswered questions about what's actually going on. It's so satisfying to actually learn about all the details during the show!
Yes please, Grady! I think more in-depth series like this would be awesome to see!
In similar news, we had a crew out on our street working down in a man hole in the middle of the street. I went and asked about what they were working on. The crew was super friendly and let me and my daughter look down in the hole. They told us they were adding an epoxy layer to protect the concrete as the waste will deteriorate concrete. I had no idea! The epoxy was a bright pink color, quite the contrast for coating a waste pipe 😂
Six months ago, I had no idea that I would come to enjoy watching videos about sewer systems six months later (the first thing I did this morning after waking up was to watch this video ^^).
Thank you for the series! There's nothing more pleasing than watching people who know what they're doing being functional and useful af.
How do you do all this?!? It's always fascinating!! And sure, more of these in-depth videos would be super. Our Engineering in Plain Sight is a go-to for the family. And for my grandson and his family. Thank you, Grady!
An engineer that's in touch with the physical side of things is always a blessing
My cat watched the whole video with me from the coffee table. 10/10 video ❤❤❤
I really hope that y'all learned ways to streamline the process of shooting a big project like this because if it got notably easier, not only would the load be lighter on y'all, but we could get more series like this. It's informative, easy to digest, and most importantly, accessible to EVERYONE. Y'all are doing something incredible and it deserves respect.
Another thing is that I love that this isn't dramaticised to hell. I want to watch things like those gold-mining shows and other things (theoretically) about industrial processes and engineering and mechanics but they're so fluffed up and outside of reality that they're worthless. I WANT just the science. I WANT it to be straightforward and lacking in mystery/suspense other than the plain lack of knowing how it works. Learning is the point of content like this. Learning is the fun. Y'all are just good at your jobs and know how to make it engaging without trying to grab me by the throat to force me to the edge of my seat. THIS is the STEAM content I want.
Bravo, Grady and crew. You did an outstanding job. 10/10.
This was an incredible series!!! The water authority, the contractors, everyone, good work across the board! Public engagement like this is so important :)
Grady, I’m not an engineer but I do have a desire to understand how just the everyday things make our lives better in the US and other first world countries. Things that we absolutely take for granted and in a world we want things now and not tomorrow, next week, new month, or next year. We all need a better understanding of how the engineering and construction works for modern everyday day lives. Thank you! Keep doing this content and the content you usually do on this channel.
Grady’s contribution to society is to share the design, hard work, and construction of our world. Without infrastructure, we can’t thrive. We need more kids inspired to study this, more communities inspired to allow nearby infrastructure, and more companies willing to share the work. We all benefit from this education.
Great mini-series, Grady. I've always enjoyed your shortform videos, and was pleasantly surprised with how fun this series was. This semi-longform format is the perfect length to occupy time while still feeling fresh and light. Hope we get more of them.
This series' videos are among my favourite of the channel. I truly appreciate the slow pace and the attention to detail and care that has been put into. Congratulations!
Thanks Grady, this has been a brilliant series. I have to admit that the term Umarell applies to me, as I'm retired and spent 18 months checking up nearly every day on a large wastewater overlay that was being installed down an main road near my house. They used micro-boring (pipe-jacking) so the road could stay open, and the day-to-day engineering of that project was incredibly interesting to this retired Telecoms engineer!
This series was the best (…so far)! Now I would love to see another construction - maybe a road tunnel or a railway project?
We thoroughly enjoyed this series. I am sure that this up-close view of our built environment will inspire more people to explore careers in construction and civil engineering, so I am pitching in in hopes that more of these series will be made. :)
awesome project. I hope to see much more of this in the future!
If you ever think 3d animation would make the video better, don't hesitate to reach out for a little collab
Those 3d animations are amazing to see and explain hard stuff really easily especially the plane one.
My neighborhood owned its own sewage lift station, and for decades we all fretfully squirreled away money to buy a replacement. Every so often the ancient pump would clog or break and the HOA would send out worrisome notices about the state of our Emergency Repair Fund. (The relic was an “Archimedes 1.0” model, if I wasn’t mistaken in my translation from the Greek, with a screw carved from a block of granite. It was powered by mules who had become too tired to ferry tourists up and down the Grand Canyon, and all the residents took turns feeding them through the day. It was a headache.)
Eventually we saved enough for a new lift station, and at the same time we got an amazing offer from the County. If we would buy a proper station, they would agree to take over operation and maintenance of it in perpetuity. It was a great deal all around. The County could be assured that everything connected to their plant was up to snuff. They could maintain it for far less money than we were spending. And we no longer lived under the threat of an extraordinary financial assessment if our old station conked out too soon. Also, we worried about the threat of a staggering sewage backup into our homes, as the closest connection to the County’s lines is up a pretty steep hill. You say “check valve”, I hear “poop flood”.
I got a close view during the construction of our new lift station. It was fascinating - but not nearly as interesting as your video series. I hope you’ll continue with these lessons in infrastructure.
This has been a fabulous series. Yes, please, more of this would be very welcome. Actually, more of any of your content is welcome. I find this to be one of the most entertaining channels on TH-cam, and I can't get Nebula where I live, so restricting it there would mean I miss out on great stuff!
I love this series! As someone who loves watching construction sites slowly make progress on my daily commute, I would love more videos in this series.
(1) wow. I mean, just, wow. Impressed by so many things here. That Grady has scaled up (a team!) while staying so true to the style he established over years with practical engineering. That he is this counter-cultural: slow! Cheerful! Focused on the humble, crucial, easily overlooked (by us non-engineers) and intricately devised foundations of modern life. Not kidding when I say makes me optimistic about humanity that this kind of thing might be popular (or presumably popular enough to support the team making it)
(2) every one of the fail safes and redundancies in this system made me think about what kind of mishaps errors and foul-smelling messes had to happen over the history of human wastewater management to get to the place where we take for granted the invisibility of the systems for sewage processing and transport. That could be a whole ‘nother channel :)
Long time watcher (like, since the start) first time commenter, and, as a STEM educator, my hat’s off to you, Grady and Co. Bravi.
Thanks for the kind words!
Dear Grady, I love your channel. I have worked, construction, inspection and engineering. However, one item you never talked about was the weather, the temperatures or humidity. This project was constructed in San Antonio, Texas. I can imagine the conditions these workers had to endure. In my senior years prior to retirement, we, the senior project management staff would often talk about, from our air conditioned field trailer, thank goodness there are some young bucks out there we would not be able to endure these temps and humidity. Have a great day and stay healthy.
I really hope you get the same access to another project in the future. As a kid I was glued at the TV watching How Its Made and Extreme Engineering so this series is right up my alley :D
Thank you Grady and everyone who helped make the series happen. what an eye opening series
I would love a documentary like this on the construction of a bridge. This is a great series.
My childhood memories of growing up on a sewage treatment plant where my dad worked as a maintenance supervisor. I loved every minute of it when I had the chance to go to work with my dad!!!
we LOVE a bit of Practical Construction in the morning!!!
This has been such an enlightening and remarkably enjoyable series. I don't recall ever being excited to see another in a series on TH-cam -- and it's for a sewage pump station. Thank you for compiling this so we can appreciate the effort that goes into things we take for granted.
I am an IT infrastructure engineering expert and my job is really stressful. I enjoy your videos so much because they feel so relaxing to me to watch and I am so obsessed by learning new things every minute of my life ^^ This series also taught me that civil engineering and IT infrastructure share the same ideas, I normally design highly available systems with full redundancy and it is so nice to see that this concept is also applied in the technology all around us ^^ Thank you Grady, please keep up doing such a great job!
What has blown my mind about this project is that on the surface, it's an incredibly simple piece of infrastructure.
Just a hole in the ground and a few pumps and pipes.
Dirty water flows in, and is pumped out to continue on its way.
Yet the amount of engineering, effort, time, materials, and money to put it all together is enormous!
And means I can't even begin to guess at the level of engineering that goes into more complex projects, like the treatment plan down the road!
Such a great series! Civil infrastructure is so under-appreciated and you are helping bring it to the forefront. Please make more of these!
Best series you’ve done, and really fascinating. The contractors were great sports letting you film the whole process, and an excellent job condensing a years worth of work in to these few episodes
I work in HR and know next to nothing about engineering or construction, but I LOVE this content! More, please! You're doing a great job, Grady! I love learning about things that are so different from what I do on a daily basis.
As a structural engineer who designs precast concrete structures, including lift stations, this was really cool to see. I don't often get to see an entire project from literal start to finish so even for someone who is in this industry it was a great series.
This was fantastic content, I almost subscribed to Nebula to get it early which I might still do but I'd rather support you and this initiative directly! I'd imagine this series won't be frequent enough to merit it's own channel, but when that different theme music hit in the first episode I was so giddy it was ridiculous haha. Thank you Grady, and to the workers who were okay with this being video'd!
Awesome series! Loved watching and learning about sophisticated infrastructure construction. As an german architect I am fascinated by the subject and also the difference in construction culture and standards. For a frist you really nailed the format, tone and style. Everything seemed effortless (although it surely wasn’t). I hope the work payed off, and I‘m looking forward for more.
best Max