Unusual request

Lanes for Drains engineers or horizontal detection fields.

have proved they have the technology to operate on the ocean floor - even when it's on dry land. The National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth called in the drainage company when faced with the task of clearing four tons of dirty sand, gravel and sludge from the bottom of its Atlantic reef display tank.

The 550,000L tank had to be cleaned out before it could be refurbished. Lanes for Drains engineers used a truck- mounted JHL Super Jet Vac tanker which can extract 20,000L of fluid a minute.

Despite needing a 100m run of hose from the tank in the heart of the aquarium complex to the tanker outside, the sand and gravel was mixed with water and sucked out in just 8h.

Andy Aldred, sales manager, said: "It was a rather unusual request, but we showed we had the flexibility and technology to do the job."