HEAVY CONSTRUCTION of a Sewage Pump Station - Ep 5 

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/

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.

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 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!

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 RU-vid channels.

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.

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 ;)

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

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.

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!

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.

Truly incredible series. Practical Engineering "single"-handedly revived an entire extinct genre of television.

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 know you said this series hasn't been super popular by the numbers. But it has been my favorite you've done!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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 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 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.

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.

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 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! 👍

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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

A whole year to make 5 episodes! I appreciate the dedication you have to this new series!

Grady as you know there is no shortage of engineers / engineering videos on RU-vid. But your narrating and your voice on top of your knowledge is miles ahead of anyone on this platform . Bravo sir bravo 👏

YES I wanna see more of this, I've always loved watching construction, PLEASE make more of these! My favorite series on the channel!

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

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 😂

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!!!

Nothing makes me happier than to login to RU-vid 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!

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.

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).

The complexity of common services we take for granted is mind-boggling

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".

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!

The vacuum fishing for wire is always a treat to show people who haven't seen it done.

Absolutely fantastic series! Every time I go on break, I sit in my car and watch. Please keep this series alive, man!

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

This was an incredible series!!! The water authority, the contractors, everyone, good work across the board! Public engagement like this is so important :)

Thank you for the series! There's nothing more pleasing than watching people who know what they're doing being functional and useful af.

As evidenced by me being a month late, I haven't been keeping up with this series too much, but I genuinely think it may be one of my favorites on the channel. It's getting to be holiday season which is moderately stressful, and the sheer joy I felt remembering this series and coming back to finish it was a godsend. Your videos have a way of making me be able to just relax and enjoy learning and thinking about new things about engineering and infrastructure I would have never otherwise appreciated or, sometimes, even noticed. Also the vacuum + plastic bag trick made me laugh out loud and decide to offer my two cents because of how absolutely genius it was :) Thanks for the hours upon hours of wonderful content, Grady, and huge kudos to the contractors and workers allowing you to film something this in depth and educational!

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!

The way the pumps are installed and so easily serviced is amazing. Love when things are designed for smooth maintenance from the start.

This was an amazing series of videos! I'm a technical drafter, and it's so easy to forget how much work is needed to bring the lines I draw on a sheet to life!

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. :)

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 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 RU-vid, and I can't get Nebula where I live, so restricting it there would mean I miss out on great stuff!

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.

An engineer that's in touch with the physical side of things is always a blessing

Thank you Grady and everyone who helped make the series happen. what an eye opening series

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.

The way they snaked that wire with the vacuum and bag was so clever!

Thanks for this trip down to memory lane. When I was backpacking Australia at the age of 24 I ended up working at the construction of a new sewage treatment plant in Port Douglas AU. Where the sewage enters the treatment plant there is a lift-station as well where I installed the pumps and pipes. I have awesome memories of that time. Love your channel giving Insights to civil engineering. But this series on the lift station in particular is special to me personally. Although I ended up in a totally different career I can advise anyone to get involved with this kind of engineering / construction. The idea that 24 years later I can zoom into google maps and see that site still being at service to the community of Port Douglas still gives me a good feeling. Despite the minor part that I played there.

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.

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

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...

I have to say, that method of pulling the wires with the bag and vacuum is absolutely great, I love it.

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

This has been such an enlightening and remarkably enjoyable series. I don't recall ever being excited to see another in a series on RU-vid -- 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.

This has been an amazing series! Do Data Centers next. That industry is rapidly expanding.

Brilliant, for someone that is charged with cleaning these stations on a regular basis, it is great to see the design and construction side of this process. Keep up the great work.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Such a great series! Civil infrastructure is so under-appreciated and you are helping bring it to the forefront. Please make more of these!

Oh my God, Grady that series was amazing. Please continue! You're one of my favorite RU-vidrs.

This was great, keep doing these! I feel like so many of the series that focus on construction are overproduced and dramatized. I loved how straight forward this was and how it let the project tell its own story.

This presentation series was fantastic. I would like to see more similar presentations. I was a support worker operating heavy equipment on the same type of project and your presentation answered all of my questions so now I know exactly what I was working on. 😂

Absolutely fantastic, I’ve never been so excited about sewerage in all my life! I’d love to see more projects like this, I can’t believe how much you and your team have put into this I know it took you over five months, everything was very impressive and you make something complicated so easy to understand and very interesting, so let me say a huge thank you very much, and congratulations!!

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!

Your consistency to shoot this construction from scratch is awesome 👍

we LOVE a bit of Practical Construction in the morning!!!

I really appreciate this series and would love to see it continue. I worked as a commercial electrician in Houston and now I work with traffic systems in another state. Seeing how the trades affect people in their everyday life is a wonderful thing to me, so thank you and your team for doing such a great job.

This was a great series. Normally in my work I don't see the pump stations while they are being constructed, well, unless there is a serious issue that comes up during construction. I normally only see them for testing and commissioning once they are built. Was nice to see the stuff I normally do not.

This series was great, and the editing made it all the way better - I'd love to see another one like it!

Amazing content, thanks goes out to you, and the whole construction team for allowing this construction to be documented. It's been an incredibly insightful series to watch

Great series Grady. I'm getting old, but never too old to learn something new.

This series was the best (…so far)! Now I would love to see another construction - maybe a road tunnel or a railway project?

Amazing series and super thankful to everyone involved for allowing this to happen!

Surprisingly fascinating series. I'd love to see more projects like this, it's amazing how cool the team was with having a nosy film crew documenting everything. Here's hoping the success of this series inspires more in the future!

It is great coming into my office and seeing the little hardhat pin that came with the Engineering in Plain Sight book stuck on the wall. Confirms I'm supporting the right channel - this series was a great watch and I can't wait for the next one.

Excellent series, thank you. Highlighting the hidden critical workers and systems that keep civilization functioning.

This was one of my favorite series that I watched in years! Thank you for all the work you put into it and I hope to see more of it in the future.