Underground Construction - July 2018 - 28

CIPL Project Sets World Record
initial adopters, and prior to
setting the new record with its
36-inch project, was tied for a
world-record, 30-inch gas main
renewal. All that experience has
taught Ragula the importance
of advance planning, the need
for long lead time and the value
of working with a proven team.
"I was actually one of the
people that was involved in
bringing the Karl Weiss technology for gas to the United
States 20 years ago, so I've got a
long-standing relationship with
them, and I believe it's critical
to work as an alliance and bring
in all the experience and horsepower you can on a project of
this magnitude," Ragula said.
David Wickersham, CEO
at PPM agreed, saying it's one
thing to go from an 8-inch main
to a 12-inch main, and another
thing entirely to go from a 30inch to a 36-inch.
"You're talking about tons
of material, tons of adhesive,
and it requires another class of
heavier duty equipment. It took
quite a bit of doing to ramp up
to meet the demand for PSE&G
on this 36-inch project, and we
certainly took this challenge
head on," Wickersham said.
"We were working closely with
the patent holder and our supplier in Berlin, Karl Weiss, and
with George's team at PSE&G
to make sure everyone was confident and prepared to get this
done."
Long lead times and careful
planning to accurately determine quantities and dimensions are essential to starting
and completing a major renewal project on time and within
budget. A thoughtful approach
to the sequence of work can
also improve time- and costefficiency.
In South Orange, onsite
preparation began with abandonment of the 2,000-linear-foot (lf) section of the main
to be lined. Before taking the
28

JULY 2018 | UConOnline.com

36-inch pipe out of service, two
dead-ended lateral mains were
installed. Excavations were
made where lateral feeds were
disconnected, and these were
later used as lining excavations.
The project team replaced deteriorated valves and made provisions for temporary relay feeds
where valves were replaced.
Before cleaning, CCTV inspection was run on each of the four
planned project segments to
confirm pipeline geometries,
check for anomalies and assess
internal condition.

A pig in grit

Ragula said lessons learned
in previous renewal projects
helped PSE&G solve problems
in the planning stage before
they happened - averting a
potential failure of the liner material, for instance, by designing
a reinforced patch to bridge a
4-inch tap hole in the pipe. But
past experience has also taught
the PSE&G team that there will
always be unexpected challenges, and the record-setting
36-inch renewal project was no
exception.
One notable example was
a stranded grit problem that
caught everyone by surprise.
Among the first steps in
preparing the pipe for lining is
to clean the interior with sandblasted grit and then use vacuum units to remove the grit.
Earlier experience suggested
that five vacuum units would
provide plenty of power to remove residual grit and debris
from each of the four segments
after cleaning.
"We dealt with a stranded
grit problem on our 30-inch
job several years ago, and we
learned that we had to put
more vacuum power on the
pipe as part of the cleaning process," Ragula said. "We overdesigned that and really thought
we had that problem licked, so
we were just floored when we

Top: Custom pig fabricated to remove stranded grit.
Middle: Liner wet out involves mixing two-part chemicals.
Bottom: Liner entering host pipe after going through inversion cone.

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Underground Construction - July 2018

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