Meet Hydrovac – industry leaders in drain maintenance
It’s no mean feat surviving 20 years in business. However, Hydrovac blew out the birthday candles and celebrated this milestone in June.
Over the years, they have grown from one truck to 50 and have 70 staff across three depots, looking after commercial and residential clients across Auckland, the Waikato, and Canterbury. The South Auckland branch, which can be found on Athy Place, Wiri, is headed by Cody Harbour, who is joined by business development advisor Alex Davidson, drivers Adam, Atish, Marvin, Dallas, Zachary, Harshvir, and assistant operators, Michael, Dylan, Deonte and David.
“Having a base in Wiri is an absolute asset; it means we can service South Auckland businesses and homes. Our reactive time is a lot quicker; our coverage is a lot wider, and we can tap into the Waikato from here,” says Cody.
“One of the best things about being based in Wiri is that everyone seems to know their neighbours around here, which you don’t always get in other parts of Auckland”.
Hydrovac offers a range of services including stormwater maintenance, grease trap and converter maintenance, servicing wastewater treatment systems, hydro excavation, CCTV drain inspections, septic tank cleaning, and spill and flood response—to name a few! They work with a range of local businesses including Griffin’s, Fulton Hogan, and Watercare.
‘’Most of the call outs to our branch are requests for septic tank inspections and empties, stormwater filter and drain maintenance and problem-solving, emptying grease traps and converters for hospitality and manufacturing businesses, CCTV (that’s sticking a camera underground to see what’s going on) and – of course – hydrovac, which is using water to excavate or using our trucks as a vacuum to suck up liquids from cesspits, sumps, detention/retention tanks, soak holes or to clean up spills and floods”.
As time has ticked on, trucks have changed a lot in terms of vacuum pumps and their efficiency and power. Hydrovac has also emerged as an industry leader in the environmental and sustainability space.
“One of the things people find most interesting about our business is the custom recycling plant we’ve built to deal with the waste we get from our jobs. Instead of just sending everything to landfill, we run our job waste through a plant and process which sorts it into rocks, metal, sand, clay/mud, and water”.
“The water is cleaned and recycled for use again in our trucks. This is an environmentally friendly way of dealing with waste, turning it into byproducts that can be used for other means, such as roading. It diverts waste from landfill and ensures an ethical, sustainable disposal method for clients. We’re very proud of developing an environmentally ethical solution our customers had been searching for when dealing with their waste”.
Hydrovac is often working in the background when you least expect it. Take car crashes and spills, for example.
“When you have a car fire, there’s petrol, oil, and other chemicals. The fire brigade puts out that car fire, but where is all that water going to go? We come out, clean up, and make sure nothing goes into the stormwater system and out into the ocean”.
“Every spill or cleanup response is slightly different depending on the job, the material, and what type of spill it is. It could be chemical, grease, septic, sometimes even plastic shards that need to be stopped from going into the stormwater system. Sometimes we need to use barriers to redirect liquid spills to a point—no two jobs are the same”.
The saying ‘When it rains, it pours’ proved true during the Auckland flooding in 2023, where Hydrovac was kept busy, using their vacuum trucks to remove water and later clean up flood-affected areas.
“The infrastructure in Auckland is quite old and not built for the population volume”.
“The crisis lasted about a week, but the flow-on effects lasted for at least another six months. We’ve been at the forefront and seen how it’s affected businesses and their productivity”.
The team at Hydrovac believes businesses need to be proactive and review when their last stormwater system maintenance was and if they have spill response plans in place. Auckland Council water quality specialists patrolled Wiri industrial businesses in 2023 to ensure there were spill plans in place.
“We encourage commercial property owners to be proactive and make sure they get their stormwater drains checked on a regular basis. This can help mitigate a swimming pool materialising in an unexpected place when it does rain!” concludes Cody.
Email se*****@*********co.nz or visit www.hydrovac.co.nz if you would like further information from the friendly Hydrovac team.
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