Work in sewers is nothing for the weak at heart. And yet tact is required. Willi Schwalm knows the profession from scratch. Hardware that wants to prove itself here needs quality. Or it is no good. The resourceful entrepreneur has been building HutlinerPacker® in his workshop for many years. For those who do not know this: The HutlinerPacker® is a special device for setting Hutliners®, short liners and hat profiles. The procedure is reminiscent of stents that are known from vascular surgery. Willi Schwalm holds a patent for his HutlinerPacker®. And the names HutlinerPacker® and Hutliner® are even protected.
Such a HutlinerPacker® essentially consists of metal and rubber. That sounds easy. But it is not. It is designed, measured, welded and cut. Bruno Schwalm, a nephew, is responsible for the metalwork. Willi Schwalm is the master of rubber, assembly and quality assurance. Suppliers supply Schwalm with tailor-made material. What is created here by hand lies somewhere in the crosshairs between real craftsmanship and teamwork with industry. The result: special devices with which main pipes from 100 to 800 mm in diameter can be repaired. And what for a hat? In order to be able to additionally repair connection connections. There is a lot to do here. The penetration of extraneous water or outflow into the ground can often be observed at the seams of the supply lines to the main pipe.
Willi Schwalm has long passed the company management on to his son Martin. However, Willi Schwalm continues to manufacture HutlinerPacker® in his workshop at Schulstraße 10 in Bad Hersfeld-Asbach. You frown when you ask how many have been built to date. At the beginning there was no counting. Today it has long exceeded the serial number 2,000 (as of 2019). Two thousand devices. That's not a lot, one might think. But a HutlinerPacker® is not a game boy. Only specialist companies own such a device. There are copycat products. But they are often of no use. You don't have to ask anyone in the industry about Willi Schwalm. There is hardly a specialist company that does not at least use a HutlinerPacker® from Willi Schwalm or knows its application. After all, there is plenty to do for everyone. The competition runs a distance longer than from here to the moon. Imagine that: around 500,000 km of public sewer network in Germany alone. Sewerage is an endless story. The same applies below: there is always something to do.
Just a stone's throw away, at Asbacher Industriestrasse 16, in the sister company Schwalm Robotic, the HutlinerPacker® are packaged and sold. Here, where Schwalm is increasingly devoting itself to partial sewer rehabilitation and robotic. Here too: all originals. All that is Schwalm.