B093 Reliability flush pump

Reliability of flushing water supply pump installations in residential buildings

Brief:

Flushing water supply as an essential provision for buildings and a reliable flushing water supply pump installation is therefore required. Seawater flushing supply system served Hong Kong for long but reliability data of supply pump installations in buildings are not yet detailed. This study examines the reliability of seawater flushing water supply pump installations in high-rise residential buildings of Hong Kong, in terms of the system availability, mean time to failure, the mean time between failures and the minimum restoration time. Flushing water supply pump installation failures in 56 typical high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong were recorded for 3 consecutive years and the data was used to determine installation component failure rates. In order to study the system failure patterns, virtual operations of 100 parallel pump sets were simulated by Monte-Carol simulations for a period of 10 year. The results showed that the mean time to failure was 0.54 years, the total down time was 316h, the failure counts were 1744 and the system availability was 0.997996. This study demonstrated an example in developing database for estimating system reliability for water plants in high-rise residential buildings in developed communities.

Further information:

Mui KW, Wong LT, Hui KW, 2010. Reliability of flushing water supply pump installations in residential buildings, The 36th CIBW062 International Symposium of Water Supply and Drainage for Buildings, 8-10 November, Sydney, Australia, pp. 135-144.