A busy service station on the Cape Garden Route, actually on the N2 freeway in a rural district north of Knysna, was experiencing several effluent problems, two of which were:

1. Diesel spillage staining at the diesel fuel island; and
2. Offensive odour in the ‘gents’ toilet.

As with all such country ‘pit stops’, the service station's effluent was treated by a small package plant preceded by the original septic tank, which was now serving as an anaerobic digestor. The landlords of the site (one of the Big Five petrol companies) had warned our customer, Danie (the tenant), about using ‘conventional’ chemicals to clean up oil spills as these had adversely affected the treatment plant in the past. As a result, it was with a marked degree of trepidation that he listened to our overtures of assurance with regard to the efficacy and environmentally safe aspects of our BIO-SYSTEMS HSDG product.

Having produced the MSDS, Danie grudgingly allowed us to do a demo on the pre-cast concrete kerbs of the diesel island. Success! HSDG cleaned off the dark fuel oil stains and the grey concrete began to shine through. We cleaned some of the interlocking concrete pavers with equal success – you could see the light grey colour of the rinsate as we scrubbed the bricks. The diesel released from the porous bricks became encapsulated by the HSDG, but we warned Danie that the oily stains may recur because HSDG is water bound and the years of diesel oil soaked into the porous concrete would ‘float’ up on top of the water that had penetrated the matrix of the concrete (the interstices). In any event, he purchased 2 x 5lt containers of HSDG to try out.

Five days later we revisited the service station to check on progress. What a difference! Although not pristine, painted concrete, the diesel island was a ‘clean’, light grey colour and the smell of diesel, together with the tacky diesel residues that stuck to the soles of your shoes, was gone. However, it was when we went to the gents that we noticed the major difference: that awful reek of stale urine was absent!

Danie, all smiles, extolled HSDG and let us into a secret. The previous Saturday he had swerved off to watch the rugby in Port Elizabeth leaving his son Klein Danie in charge. The woman who cleaned the rest rooms came to Klein Danie for the key to the stores, which he duly gave her. Not being able to read, the woman selected the other 5lt of HSDG, mistaking it for toilet bowl cleaner (both products being a similar blue colour), which she always used to mop the floors. At this point we should explain that most men visiting the gents are in a hurry to complete their journey and are not always too careful about drippage.

When Beauty returned it to him Klein Danie pocketed the key and thought no more of it. When his father, Danie, arrived back late the following evening he dashed into the loo, bladder bursting after the long drive. As he stood contemplating the tiles, he noticed, vaguely, that the urine reek had as good as disappeared. The next morning, Danie made his way to the gents again and, finding Beauty mopping the floor in the ladies – the rest room toilets are side by side – he looked at the 5lt product she was using and spotted the poor girl’s mistake. He was about to reprimand her, when he realized that the urine reek in the ladies had completely gone, too. As was the case in the gents, there was no typical smell at all. Realizing it must be the HSDG that was doing it, he told his cleaning staff to scrub out each cubicle and all around the urinal trough using HSDG.

To prove his point, Danie beckoned us to the rest rooms. Sure enough, there was no odour whatsoever in either the ladies or the gents toilets. Another excellent benefit of HSDG!

Since those days, six years ago, we have found that HSDG removes and encapsulates ammoniacal residues from evaporated urine from all hard surfaces. It is now used to great advantage in animal stalls, especially piggeries, where it has saved many a farmer’s bacon from formerly complaining neighbours.

Case history 2

A fish processing factory had spent a fortune on a new production wing that pre-prepared fish fingers for the retail trade. Because of the quantity of water used to wash down the running machinery (fish is a very sticky), the expensive epoxy coated floor was specially roughened to prevent staff from losing their footing. The ramp down to the cold room posed a particular problem. Although only a slightly sloping ramp (1.5m over 30m) with extra roughened strips of epoxy, it was becoming slippery to the extent that a forklift truck could slide out of control while driving up or down it. The final straw came one evening when a truck on its way to collect pallets of wet fish slid, at speed, out of control and stuck its forks into the expensive aluminum cold room door.

BIO-SYSTEMS SA heard about the debacle the following day – we were assisting with the effluent plant at the time – and offered to clean the fatted floor with our BIO-SYSTEMS HSDG. The works manager agreed to let us 'try it out'. It took two applications to clean a patch, approximately 3m². Satisfied with the result, fish factory management gave us the order to clean the entire ramp, some 150m² (which we did at a cost of roughly R875.00 + Vat).

That was back in 2001. Today, the factory's cleaners add 1lt of HSDG to their wet scrubbing machine once a day. For R490.00 + Vat (material cost) the forklifts now drive up and down in complete safety on a surface that is as rugged as the engineers first intended.