Pipe Cracking Louis Botha

We combined many of our specialized services to serve our client with the best solutions for this project, we had sections of size for size replacement as well as upsizing of existing pipelines with existing material ranging from clay, reinforced concrete and HDPE with existing pipeline sizes ranging from 160mm, 200mm and 300mm.

Most of the Pipe Cracking for this project consisted of size for size replacement of existing 250mm clay sewer pipe with new 250mm HDPE pipe. There were sections that consisted of upsizing existing 160mm reinforced concrete lines with new 250mm HDPE pipe. We had sections of size for size sewer pipe replacement which consisted of rehabilitating existing 200mm clay sewer pipelines with new 200mm HDPE pipe.

Our biggest challenging section for this project was an existing 300mm reinforced concrete pipeline that was to be replaced with a new 400mm HDPE pipeline, the area was in a section where the water table was high and the ground conditions were clay, the forces required to pipe crack this section were great and we couldn’t get a stable anchoring point for our pipe cracking down unit. We replaced 1 section with conventional pipe cracking and then offered the client the alternative to replace the other sections with Pipe Reaming.

We then moved to a section where the existing pipeline was averaging 5 meters below NGL, the water table was relatively high which caused the ground conditions to not be stable enough for us to allow our employees to work within the pit constantly (even with shoring). We offered the client an alternative to replace the existing pipeline via Pipe Reaming, of which we completed 3 sections.

We were then asked to replace an existing HDPE sewer line which we attempted to do via pipe cracking however the ground around the pipeline did not allow enough displacement of the ground to accommodate the upsized pipe. We offered our client the alternative to install a new pipeline via HDD.

We completed the HDPE Butt-Welding for all the new sewer lines and removed the internal beads. The areas in which we conducted the Pipe Cracking had major flow within the existing pipeline, our client blocked the lines and over-pumped throughout the Pipe Cracking and Pipe Reaming activities.

On average we pulled sections of 60 – 70 meters, Pipe Cracking is an extremely effective method for replacement of existing pipelines. We have the necessary tooling to replace existing pipelines that are AC, Clay, fiberglass, Reinforced Concrete, steel, UPVC and even HDPE. We are also able to replace pipelines size for size or to upsize the existing pipeline for areas where the existing infrastructure needs to be upgraded or in areas where there are future upgrades planned.