Report - 'Old Man River', Sheffield, December 2017

[tarkovsky]

Nice one!
Some lovely brick and stonework in there.
As your outfall pic shows, it still surprises me just how much in the way of wet wipes, jam rags and other sewer debris gets past the processors in these CSO chambers. They are supposed to screen items larger than 6mm but when they overflow at full pelt, they are practically useless at protecting the watercourses from this rubbish.

Cheers @TheVicar - I know, there’s a fair amount of filth gets in the cleanest of streams...

 

[alsoknownas]

Hey @alsoknownas - really appreciate you sharing your memories and I’m really glad you found the post. I think I must have been your post on a Sheffield Histories site that I’d read before going here, so it’s great that you’ve seen the pics. Having read your earlier post about the long pipe heading towards Wordsworth Avenue I was really surprised that it ended so abruptly at the CSO, but I guess things change. The original pipe must still be there. There’s another potential way down in that direction that I need to check out further that starts after the pond, so will report back if that works out at all...

Again, really good to hear your memories, thanks a lot!

Thanks for that tarkovsky, one thing puzzles me though.
From your inspection of the processor chamber, do you think that the Wordsworth Avenue junction CSO is still in use and that the processor has simply been inserted at the bottom end of the long brick overflow pipe in order to "filter" the "solids" from entering the watercourse ? Or do you think that they have broken into the main sewer just below the Five Arches and installed a new CSO and processor at that point and abandoned the CSO up the road.
Incidently I have guestimated from maps the distance we travelled up that little brick pipe and back at around 600 metres there and back. I'd be lucky to travel 6 metres nowadays.

 

[tarkovsky]

Thanks for that tarkovsky, one thing puzzles me though.
From your inspection of the processor chamber, do you think that the Wordsworth Avenue junction CSO is still in use and that the processor has simply been inserted at the bottom end of the long brick overflow pipe in order to "filter" the "solids" from entering the watercourse ? Or do you think that they have broken into the main sewer just below the Five Arches and installed a new CSO and processor at that point and abandoned the CSO up the road.
Incidently I have guestimated from maps the distance we travelled up that little brick pipe and back at around 600 metres there and back. I'd be lucky to travel 6 metres nowadays.

Well, the new processor room comes very soon into the overflow pipe - after a couple of metres the pipe heads 90 degrees upwards and then back along, to where to room is. This suggests the new processor room is actually above the old pipe. Whether it reattaches to the other pipe after this room it’s not possible to say from this direction.

How big was the Wordsworth Avenue chamber roughly, from memory? Was it larger than the one in my pics? The potentially tricky way to have a look at it becomes more appealing if it’s a decent size!

Sorry about your lack of mobility, must be really frustrating, to say the least. Reminds me to be grateful and to keep crawling up and down dodgy drain pipes while I’m able! ;-)

 

[alsoknownas]

Sixty years is a long time but I am blessed with a photographic memory and to my young eyes the chamber did seem larger than the chamber in your photos. I remember penstocks with chains on the two incoming sewers and a vaulted brick roof. From where we were stood on the end of the brick tunnel with the combined flow going down over the sill on our left the incoming sewers seemed some distance away.
Strangely enough the dam overflow tunnel photos looked exactly as I remember them.

 

[tarkovsky]

vaulted brick roof

That’s enough to spark my interest! Haha! Let’s see how we get on with seeing if that’s still there!