We feel your system is top of the line and I’ve told numerous municipalities about it. Your customer service is bar none and we greatly appreciate all you do. Thank you for having such a great company and taking care of all of us in this industry.
We have and are still using various other systems like ultrasonics, and a system called Retro Pac, and many float balls. Your system was not only easy to install but easy to maintain, and the operators are able to understand and diagnose issues with grease and rags. The system doesn’t give us nuisance alarms like the other systems do. Our facility like many others are only manned 8 hours of the day and operators are on call for the remainder of the time, so nuisance alarms are not only time consuming but costly. Fogrod has proven to be very reliable whereas the other systems require calibration and more maintenance. Myself as a union electrician have installed many systems over the years and yours has solved many of the problems that arise in the harsh conditions they are put in. Other systems will go into fail mode and leave you down whereas yours has the features to keep the pumps running and gives you a warning of build up. Feel free to contact us at any time
Bill Perry @ City of Plattsburgh Water Resource Recovery Facility
Simplicity – How it Works
FOGRod installed in well
The FOGRod hangs in the wastewater and connects to the LIT in the control panel with its 11-core cable. The LIT applies a small voltage to each metal contact on the FOGRod and looks for current flow. When a FOGRod contact is under water, current flows to ground. When a contact is dry, no current flows. It’s like closing a lightswitch – but in this case wastewater completes the circuit.
The LIT has 10 relays corresponding to the 10 contacts on the FOGRod. Pick the relays you want to use and wire them into your PLC, your pump controller – or even directly into your starters. If you are replacing floats, just unhook the float wires and connect the LIT relays into the same points.
LIT installed in control panel – Click to expand
It’s like having 10 floats, but you just pick the ones you want to use.
The LIT also has a 4-20mA output that increases in 1mA steps for each FOGRod contact. So you can replace pressure transducers, ultrasonics and bubblers. If you are replacing floats you can wire the 4-20mA into your telemetry system and get remote level.
Failsafe in the Worst Grease
The FOGRod has no moving parts, no electronics and no sensors – so there’s nothing in the wetwell to tangle up, get stuck in position, or fail.
But what about grease buildup? Grease does build up, especially around the lead pump start. Hang the FOGRod in the turbulent part of the well near the inflow. The grease is all broken up and when it builds up on the FOGRod it doesn’t completely isolate the metal
contacts from the wastewater.
Two months grease buildup – FOGRod still working fine
Suppose the grease buildup gets so bad that it completely isolates the lead pump contact from the wastewater – the lead pump won’t start. The level keeps rising, but when it gets to the contact above (which is cleaner) the LIT registers that level.
The LIT now activates all the level relays up to this point – so the lead pump starts, just a little later. And the LIT knows there is a problem because there is a “dry” contact below a “wet” contact so it activates a fault relay and a fault light comes on. The fault relay can be wired into telemetry.
That warning tells you it needs cleaning – it’s not usually an urgent alarm, but you know when the grease buildup is starting to affect the device. The FOGRod is easy to clean. Just pull it up by the cable through the tough “squeegee”, the cleaning pad that is held in the mounting bracket.
Mounting bracket with cleaning pad
Compare that with cleaning floats. Transducer “cleaning” often results in an (expensive) return to factory.
The whole solution – the LIT which goes in the control panel, the FOGRod which hangs in the well with 50ft cable, the mounting bracket & cleaning pad – costs $1,380 delivered to your door.
With 100ft cable, the delivered price is $1,460.
Ragging and Normal Grease Buildup
What about rags? This is a major issue (usually) for conductive level devices. The FOGRod/LIT has some patented technology to deal with rags and buildup.
First, the metal contacts are not one above the other, they are offset by 120 degrees. This makes it much less likely to short two contacts with rags. More important – the LIT checks for two different contacts being activated too quickly. When this is detected, the LIT starts a 3-minute timer and holds out all of the higher level relays from activating until the end of the timer period. This prevents short cycling. At the end of the 3 minutes the Clean FOGRod alarm latches on the LIT, giving a visual alarm and activating a fault relay. You can wire this into telemetry so you will know there is a problem.
Normal grease buildup eventually can have the same effect of “shorting out” adjacent contacts, starting the lead pump earlier. The fault monitoring described above will prevent short cycling in the same way.
This video shows the functionality:
Cable Breaks
The FOGRod cable has 11 cores but only 10 contacts. One of the cores is a “loopback” test for the top contact. If the cable is broken (e.g., from rats eating the cable) the LIT will register an alarm and activate a fault relay. The same happens if the cable insulation is stripped off in the cable conduit.
Ease of Installation & Warranty
The FOGRod has a 10-year warranty. The LIT has a 2-year warranty – extendable to 5-years for another $100.
You can replace your floats or your transducer (or ultrasonic or bubbler) without any changes to your control logic or PLC – no rewiring or reprogramming needed. It’s a very simple install.
Ask for a demo, or request a free 35-day trial. See for yourself why the FOGRod is so popular with collection system guys.
How tough is the FOGRod?
In the five minute video below, you see the FOGRod being thrown up into the air, landing on concrete…
Being bent…
And still working at the end…for those who want to skip to the throwing part, it’s around 2:45 into the video:
That’s one reason why there’s a 10 year warranty on the FOGRod. Another reason is the AL6XN stainless steel used for the FOGRod contacts, much higher grade than 316.
Right click and “Save As” to copy the high res version of the video.
How bright are the LEDs in the Level Indicator Transmitter (LIT)?
In the video above, the LIT is shown in the bright Californian sun. Here is a frame from the video of the LIT when the level is at 90%:
