Come on in - the water's pongy - Underwater Contractor Magazine

Visibility at the plant is zero, all work has to be done by touch.
Come on in - the water's pongy
It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. On his third visit to South Africa this year, Michael Cocks finds out what it is like to dive in sewerage and takes an opportunity to cast his eye over training standards

I have always believed that it is important that I experience as many types of commercial diving as possible. I have had two dives with Xagene Lotz in South Africa's Cape Town Aquarium where he allows divers to dive in standard gear with the sharks. Xagene has also run Breakwater Diving Services, a commercial diving company, for the past seven years and over the last four years he has built up a specialist side to his business, diving in sewerage works.
That is how I found myself on a warm, sunny day in June diving into a biological reactor effluent plant.

Hot
Xagene and his team are on 24-hour standby to deal with any emergency and have so far dived in 11 sewerage plants. During the summer they prefer to dive at night or very early in the morning as the water can become hot and the stand by diver, fully kitted, can find that he gets pretty uncomfortable. They are called in for inspection work, to repair aeration pipes, to recover lost objects and deal with broken machinery.
My job at the plant, which serves the local population of 350,000 people, was to recover a broken grill and to check that a mixer impeller was intact. The more unpleasant diving is in the digester, one stage back down the treatment ladder, and I have volunteered to do this on my next trip so that I can experience the full flavour of Breakwater's work.
Conrad Newman from Water and Sanitation Services (South Africa), who manages the plant, could not have made me more welcome and was kind enough to make a video of my dive. Before my dive I had to be inoculated against hepatitis B, tetanus and cholera. I was fully briefed and then dressed in a heavy duty Gates constant volume suit with gloves attached to it. An AH3 helmet attached to the suit rendered me fully enclosed. The stand by diver, who was fully dressed during my dive, wore a 17 helmet and a constant volume suit with a double exhaust. The hat was in free flow mode.

Fully enclosed in a heavy duty Gates constant volume suit, attached gloves and AH3 helmet.

The plant serves the local population of 350,000.

Getting hosed down after the dive.

Pumps
All the pumps in the area in which I was to dive were switched off and all necessary safety checks and Òlock outÓ permits were put into place. In view of the possible presence of methane gas, they cannot use compressors on the site so my air was supplied from a large cylinder.
Altogether, I was submerged for 30 minutes. Although my dive was a shallow one, the moment my helmet went under the water I could not see a thing and I had to do my work completely by touch. Communications were excellent - this is not always the case with this type of helmet - and, to my surprise, the water was relatively cool and I felt comfortable and relaxed.
On leaving the water I had to remain in the suit and helmet for ten minutes while I was hosed down with clean water and then decontaminated. Much to my amazement, this had been one of my more enjoyable and relaxed dives, and I am appreciative of the keen interest that was taken in my safety and the professionalism of the operation.
Xagene and his team have certainly established a niche market and it is likely that this side of the business, currently about a fifth of their total turnover, will expand. They find the AH3 very suitable for this type of work but they are willing to try out the Genesis system as well.

Busy
Breakwater Diving is in the process of getting a Lloyds IWS certificate for inspection work, and is currently being audited. Xagene maintains the helmets and other equipment himself and prides himself in paying his divers above the normal civil diving pay in South Africa. At the time of writing, the company is currently busy with a salvage operation in Hout Bay harbour.
Having now had my first dive in sewerage, and before that two in Britain in liquid cheese with Construction Marine, I now welcome other challenges and hope our readers will come up with some ideas.
While in South Africa I also had the opportunity to see more British and Irish divers being trained. This time I visited a new school in Cape Town, the Commercial Diving Academy, and returned to the Professional Diving Centre in Durban.
Once again, I was suitably impressed - as were the five British and Irish divers who were being trained there. Many of the worries about diver training raised by QSS in the March/April 2003 issue of UCI were being met.
The Commercial Diving Academy was set up earlier this year by Dries and Lets Erasmus to run an eight-week scuba and initial surface supply course (Dries continues to run his diving equipment maintenance company DRC Dive Systems). Those that do not meet Dries's high standards are asked to leave the course. Three students that I recommended to train with him - John West, Darragh Woodcock and Damian Slaford - were in the eighth week of the course and I stayed with them in their comfortable rented flat.
As in Durban, the trainees work long hours, six days a week. Scuba training is done mainly at sea and surface supply in a quarry and Cape Town harbour, where visibility is close to zero.

Variety
In the harbour they have had to construct a complicated structure. The school has a wide variety of helmets and students have to set up and demobilise their equipment each day - good preparation for working on a real dive site.

Michael Cocks (right) with student Jason Bartlett aboard the Superlite.

After three dives in Cape Town I had a further five in Durban, the longest of which being two hours. I was very well looked after in the water by one of the students, Jason Bartlett, who was given strict instructions to make certain that I obeyed my decompression stops. On one occasion, when I was asked to come up early, there was a mighty battle between him (trying to hold me down) and the tender who was pulling on my umbilical. Again, I was impressed by the standard of the helmets and instruction.
I dived mainly in the quarry but had one dive on the well-equipped catamaran Superlite. Grant Jameson has recently acquired a second much larger boat, the Heliox, on which students will be able to sleep aboard.
Durban has deepwater very close to the shore. With work in the harbour - in front of the containers used for accommodation - the students are again getting realistic diving. Grant tries to dismiss anyone not completely happy in the water early on the course, and returns most of the cost of their training. He works closely with Dries Erasmus, so the three divers I visited in Cape Town were able to slot effortlessly into Grant's five-week course and join two other English divers, Jason Morris and Chris Douglas.
I will be back in South Africa in November to visit the Professional Diving Centre and the West Coast Commercial Diving School (formerly Port Nolloth) to see more British and Irish divers being trained.

.Contacts - Xagene Lotz, Breakwater Diving Services, De Beers Avenue, Strand, Cape Province, South Africa, Tel: +0027 21 856 2225, e-mail: copperhat@mweb.co.za; Dries Erasmus, Commercial Diving Academy 177 Blauuwberg Road,Table View, Cape Town, South Africa 7441, Tel: +0027 21 556 1719; Grant Jameson, Professional Diving Centre, Bremen Road, Brayhead Ship Repair Basin, Durban Harbour, South Africa, Tel: +0027 31 205 8019.