Ian Greenwell of Vernon Morris Utility Solutions on site with the custom-made Standpipe equipment.

Hartlepool Water were asked to supply clean water to almost 100 ships from over 15 countries this weekend as Hartlepool plays host to the prestigious Tall Ships Race 2010.

The ships will leave Kristiansand in Norway on Sunday 1st August 2010 to embark on the second race of The Tall Ships’ 2010 heading for Hartlepool.

Ahead of their arrival Hartlepool Water have installed a temporary network extension fitted with specially designed equipment to ensure they can supply the Tall Ships and the associated Tall Ships Village with clean water during their four day stay, without any threat to their clean water network in the harbour.

Tom Norman, Operations Support Manager at Hartlepool Water commented “We needed to take measures to ensure that while supplying water; there was no possibility of backflow from the Tall Ships to our water mains network on land. As we were unable to find anything suitable off the shelf, we approached Vernon Morris Utility Solutions to manufacture our specially designed standpipes for us.”

Established for over 65 years, Vernon Morris are well known in the water industry for bespoke, precision engineering & manufacturing. Vernon Morris was able to manufacture custom-made Standpipe equipment designed to deliver water from the mains on the harbour to the Ships with an approved back siphonage prevention device. The backflow prevention device is fitted to a hose union tap mounted on each standpipe between the land network and the ship to improve the level of backflow prevention, critical to Hartlepool’s Water supply.

The special standpipes were designed by Hartlepool Water & then engineered & manufactured by Vernon Morris to Hartlepool Waters specification.

Tom Norman, Operations Support Manager at Hartlepool Water commented “We are happy to be supporting Hartlepool Tall Ship’s, it is great for our town and region. We just needed to get the right equipment in place quickly and reliably. Vernon Morris have helped us to do that. We have worked closely with the team at Vernon Morris Utility Solutions on a number of projects and always had a good result.”