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.”