BJSoftware News for Sewers Users

The most recent major update (2020.10.30) upgraded display technology and expanded design capabilities. This one (2021.01.24) modernizes the underlying database and help systems.

The database system has been upgraded from a twenty-something year old, obsoleted technology to current technology. You should notice a significant speed up in the saving of designs (at least I did), but most importantly it keeps the software up to date with changing tech. With this update Sewers will download a new resources database (the one Sewers uses to store all the bits and pieces used to assemble a design from) and it will create a new user database to store your designs. On first run the software will port all of your old designs over to the new system and archive the old database. If you have a lot of designs it may take a few minutes.

The old help system was cumbersome to update and the technology behind it was pretty ancient, so we have moved it to web-based deployment. The new help window slides out when you click the [<] button on the right side of the screen. All of the content is delivered live from http://help.bjsoftware.com. The content of the help system has been updated. And since updates are a lot easier now, please let me know what additions to the help you might like to see.

I have been running this upgrade myself for about two months now to make sure it is solid, and it appears to be. But, as always, if you have any issues please let me know.

Version 2020.10.30 is a new release with some major, mostly underlying, changes.

• The old rendering engine was replaced with a new one that should produce better looking reports, especially PDFs.
• Pumps, tanks, filters, etc. should now persist when you navigate in the design wizard and they are saved in the database now as well. Plumbing fittings are not saved, yet. But hopefully they will in a coming version.
• A broader range of effluent filters has been added and the defaults editor has been modified to allow multiple selections as defaults.
• The database of text snippets that Sewers uses to generate designs has been thoroughly review for spelling and many typos have been fixed.

When you upgrade there are two files that should be installed by the upgrade utility. If one of them fails to install, run the setup program again. There should be a copy of it in the Sewers program folder or you can download it from the website.

If you have any issues with this update please contact me!

We have been charging the same $30 per design since Sewers was first released for licensing 20 years ago, back in 2000. Our costs (development software licensing, insurance, web servers, etc.) have gone up considerably over that time to the point where we have to decide whether to quit, work at a loss, or raise prices. I feel obligated to keep going and we can’t provide this service at a loss, so we are raising our prices. Effective August 1, 2020, the new price will be $50 per design.

Sewers now includes Eljen GSF (Geotextile Sand Filter) mound systems. Manifold placement options (either end or center) and shallow limiting zones (< 20") are supported. At this time only pumped systems are supported.

For those of you who are having trouble finding the newly relocated PDF capabilities…

Click the “Print…” button on the design viewer. The old print dialog now has an option to choose between a printer or to save as a PDF. If you choose “Print to PDF” you will get another dialog when you click the “Print” button to choose a place to save the PDFs.

At version 2018.09.09 there are three changes of note:

• Printing to PDFs has been merged with the regular printing routine, so the “Print to PDF…” button is gone.
• The FD siphons have been updated. Some new 2″ ones have been added. Also, when the dose is high due to delivery line volume the software attempts to reduce the delivery line diameter according to manufacturer’s instructions. The factors that will trigger the attempt are: using a 3″ or 4″ siphon (they both have a 4″ discharge) and the minimum dose required due to the volume of the delivery line is larger than the dose would otherwise be (siphons require a 3 minute runtime, so often that is the culprit). The software then verifies that the friction does not cause more head than available before settling on a new diameter, if a smaller one will work at all. Friction is such a big issue because siphons have larger flow rates due to the larger lateral hole sizes required.
• We have added Norweco’s Singulair 960 Hydro-Kinetic Bio-Film Reactor (HKBFR) systems discharged into at-grade beds.

Expect another big system type addition in the next week or two.

The new EC7 series of Ecoflos has been added to Sewers, including the new Pack systems (single unit handling septic, filter, and dose).

We’ve added a pre-pay option to Sewers to work around the issues with PayPal. Now you can pre-load your account to avoid using PayPal through Sewers. You can either send us a check or pay through the “Pay license fees” link on BJSoftware.com.

The payment is credited to your account manually, so it may take a little time for it to enable.

A few users have been having trouble purchasing through PayPal. If you get an “invalid transaction” message from PayPal, close Sewers, go to Internet Options in the Control Panel and delete your cookies (for most systems: click the Delete… button in the Browsing History section on the General tab, check Cookies and Website Data and then click the Delete button).

The problem saving to PDF in the previous version has been fixed at version 2015.05.29.