The City of Cape Town’s Water and Sanitation Directorate has welcomed 23 jet machine trucks, vacuum tanker trucks and jet vacuum combination trucks to its fleet, at a cost of more than R53-million.
Each jet machine truck has 5 000-l water tank capacity and can release water at a high pressure of 240 l to 245 l a minute.
These trucks are used mainly to clear blocked sewer pipes.
Vacuum tanker trucks can draw 10 000 l of raw sewage at a time and are used to empty septic tanks.
Jet vacuum combination trucks are essentially a combination of the jet machine truck and the vacuum tanker truck.
This means they can unblock sewer drains and take in raw sewage.
The front part is for clean water to unblock sewer drains, at a capacity of 5 000 l.
The rear section is for raw sewage, and has a capacity of 4 000 l.
“Besides using these trucks for normal daily operations, [they] also play an important role in proactive measures such as jetting sewer pipes to remove the build-up of sand and waste items, such as litter, material, rubble, wet wipes, fats and oils that do not belong in the sewer network, to help reduce overflows,” says Water and Sanitation MMC Zahid Badroodien.