Fused Plastic Line Saves $400,000 on One-Mile Pull
Taking a chance on an innovative method for installing a mile-long force main appears to have paid off for a South Carolina water utility. The contractor used horizontal directional drilling to bore a way for more than 5,000 ft of butt-fused pipe, then pulled the 10-in.-diameter pipe back through the borehole. The pullback is the longest ever for the novel gasketless PVC.
The project will deliver up to 1 million gallons per day of reuse water from the Port Royal Water Reclamation Facility, operated by the Beaufort Jasper Water & Sewer Authority, Beaufort, S.C., to irrigate Secession Golf Course across the Beaufort River. The $1.7-million project, 18 months in the planning, mobilized on May 19 and began horizontal directional drilling under the river. It climaxed June 11 with a successful, 17-hour operation to pull 5,120 ft of PVC pipe back through, with the pullback suspended four times for as long as two hours to fuse 1,000-ft strings of pipe before continuing.