HDD Heidelberg (Hard Ground)

This project consisted of 5 road crossings for 160mm water lines in hard ground conditions and HDPE Butt-Welding of the new HDPE pipe.

We established our Astec 4045 HDD Rig.

The main challenge we faced on this project was the existing underground services that were extremely close to the level that the new HDPE pipe had to be installed. All open-trenching works were complete prior to our arrival thus we had two inverts to drill between on every crossing limiting our allowable deviation, with the limited space within the servitude we had no option but to drill along side the existing services.

Prior to commencing with the HDD we requested the client to conduct GPR Scanning to identify the services that were in our drill path. We completed all the crossings with an aggressive HDD head, the hard ground conditions damaged our HDD head. We also attempted the crossings using a tricone HDD head specifically designed for these type of ground conditions, however we kept being diverted from our planned path and swapped out for the aggressive HDD head.

All crossings were successfully completed.