OnSite News
Portadam: the perfect temporary, high volume water storage solution
When OnSite's sister company, Integrated Water Solutions (IWS) had a requirement to store up to 500,000 litres of water on a site in the middle of nowhere for The Coal Authority, OnSite’s versatile Portadam system proved to be the ideal solution.
Joe Bartram of IWS contacted our Portadam Manager, David Wedgbury, after he had been approached by The Coal Authority to undertake pumping operations and associated water analysis testing at a borehole in Swadlincote. The project involved the removal of water from a borehole using a submersible pump to help the client determine if a permanent pumping solution could bring about a lowering of the ground water table in the area surrounding the borehole.
As the borehole was located immediately next to a main road and surrounded by industrial buildings, IWS had to find a remote storage solution to hold the large volumes of water to be removed.
The Portadam system is usually commissioned to keep water out of a working area or as a defensive dam to protect property from flood. It is less known for, but equally effective, however, at keeping water in. By simply erecting four straight Portadam ‘A’ frame barriers and linking them together with four internal corner sections finally covering the entire structure with a huge, purpose made sheet, OnSite were able to construct a 22m x 16m x 1.5m deep temporary storage reservoir on the nearest available flat site, which was almost 1000m away from the borehole location.
To get the water from the borehole to the reservoir, IWS laid a temporary 150mm dia. SR17 pumping main from the borehole through to an aeration tank located next to the Portadam reservoir. The tank disperses the carbon dioxide held in solution in the water. This in turn helps to produce an iron flocculant that will drop out of suspension, settling in the bottom of the storage reservoir.
The reservoir has an integrated side weir allowing surface level water to overflow at a controlled rate into an adjacent watercourse. The overflowing water is, of course, sampled and tested daily by IWS staff to ensure it meets the quality standard required by the EA. The analysis results are viewable by the client within hours of the samples being taken on IWS’s Online Report Tracker system.
Joe Bartram of IWS told us…
"At present, two weeks in to the trial, we are extremely pleased with how the Portadam is working. I feel the big benefit of the Portadam is its versatility i.e. It can be formed into any square or rectangular lagoon to fit in to the available space at site and also the weir is proving extremely useful."
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