This month, we're talking "big pipe." And we mean really big pipe.
Hear the latest advancements in High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) #pipe technology for large diameter applications. We'll explore the challenges that engineers and contractors face when working with large diameter #hdpe pipes, and the solutions that have been developed to overcome them. The webinar will also provide insights into the benefits of using HDPE pipes for large diameter projects.
We'll cover:
→ Importance of large diameter HDPE in infrastructure projects
→ Challenges faced by engineers and contractors in large diameter pipe
→ Solutions for Large Diameter HDPE Pipelines
→ Benefits of HDPE for large diameter projects
→ Examples of successful large diameter HDPE pipe projects
This month, we're talking "big pipe." And we mean really big pipe.
Hear the latest advancements in High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) #pipe technology for large diameter applications. We'll explore the challenges that engineers and contractors face when working with large diameter #hdpe pipes, and the solutions that have been developed to overcome them. The webinar will also provide insights into the benefits of using HDPE pipes for large diameter projects.
We'll cover:
→ Importance of large diameter HDPE in infrastructure projects
→ Challenges faced by engineers and contractors in large diameter pipe
→ Solutions for Large Diameter HDPE Pipelines
→ Benefits of HDPE for large diameter projects
→ Examples of successful large diameter HDPE pipe projects
Okay, everybody, welcome back to another version of ISCO Insights. My name is Will Vote. Coming live to you from Colorado Springs. Here at our good friends at Global Underground. Believe it or not, I'm actually on the road. They let me out of the office, which is kind of scary for once. And we're going to do this the old school way. Gary, I believe you're in studio. Can you hear me? All right. Well, coming in loud and clear from Colorado. Man, good to see you. Good. Perfect. You, too. So before we get into a quick set of bios and introductions, let's go ahead and start this off. For anybody who has not attended and incites or needs a quick refresher, all your video and audio is turned off to enhance the quality. So if you're sitting at home in your pajamas, don't worry about it. And for feedback or troubleshooting, please use the chat box. We'll do our best to help out with any technical issues or any Zoom problems and any feedback you have from a technical standpoint, please use the chat box. I think the most important thing is if you are looking to ask questions, we would love for this to be a two way conversation or perhaps a couple hundred person way conversation at this point. So please use the Q&A tab and we've got some panelists standing by to be able to answer any of those questions or as many of those questions as they can coming in. So again, please use that Q&A tab. There'll also be a couple of poles during the journey there. And let's maybe try one of those polls out real quick to make sure we can all use those. And if you could pull up in our first poll question, which is when did you last spec HDPE on a project? Was it? I don't know. Jordan Not one of our panelists probably expected maybe just last week. You know, Gary has never written a specification in his life, so that would be never. But we just want to get to know the audience a little bit. And it looks like for the most part, we got about 41% saying in the last couple of months and then 13% saying never spec HDPE not yet anyways. So we appreciate everybody coming on here. Let's go ahead and dive into our panelists, our presenters. Gary, you want to maybe give an introduction and tell people why they should listen to you? Yeah, well, it's good to be with you again. My name's Gary Bouvet. I'm with ISCO I've been been with this go for coming up on my 26 years. Will, can you believe that? And been in the pit HDPE business for about 30 years in a variety of roles. So glad to be here to share some knowledge for the people today. It's kind of fun. We haven't done this set up in a long time. Normally we're in studio. This takes us back to the real dark days of early COVID. So this is this is kind of insights OG version, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm not in my dining room like I was the first time we ever did this. Right. Well, thanks so much for being here, Gary. We're going to lean on you heavily, as always. And we've actually got our first international presenter from from Canada coming up here on the program, Mark McDonald with a com up in Canada. Mark, welcome to the program. Would you maybe give a brief bio and background in the industry? Oh, for sure. Mark McDonald I am the manager of our major Convenience and Hydraulics group in Winnipeg, Manitoba, kind of in the middle of pretty much right in the middle of North America. I've been with the E Comm and legacy companies for going on 38 years now. So the been been around for a while. I'm also the technical practice lead for water pipelines in Canada, which is part of our larger technical collaboration group internationally within AECOM. The project that I'm we'll be chatting about a little bit today is in Victoria, B.C. So on Vancouver Island and B.C., there was the McLaughlin Point, the wastewater treatment plant and the wood. And the HDPE component of that was the the outfall from the treatment plant into the ocean. So prior to this plant being constructed in went into service in 2021, the city of Chicago was dumping their sewage pretty much straight into the ocean and the treatment plant and outfall solved that problem. The outfall itself is about 1900 meters long, so about 6200 feet of solid wall HDPE 20 to 50 millimeters diameter, so about 78 inches. And that was installed in the summer of 2019. And to my knowledge, is still on the bottom of the ocean. So we're happy. Yeah, that's great to hear. And you've got a pretty good background there. I imagine that's that's an image from from the site there. Is that just digging at the EPA's view. Yeah that is McLaughlin point. Yeah Well Mark, thanks for being here with us. And Jordan, I want to give you an opportunity to come on as well. Jordan with Bowen Collins. I want to maybe give a quick background and experience in the industry. Yeah, as you mentioned, I work with Bowen, Collins and Associates. We're a water resource engineering firm and in Utah that has about 100 employees and we specialize in water and wastewater planning, design and construction. I have six years experience in planning, design and construction of over 75 miles of large diameter transmission pipelines up to 132 inch diameter, including a recent project three miles of 2000 millimeter, which is 78 inch solid, while HDPE pipe for the Steininger Service Canal Enclosure project that's currently under struction under construction in Vernal, Utah. Fantastic. Jordan, I really appreciate you being here. That's been a fun project to see the pictures of and be somewhat involved with. I was lucky enough to visit besides. So guys, I say we go ahead and get started. We're here today to talk about all things XXL htp. We want to see. You know, there's been a lot of technical advances that allow HDPE same features and benefits into a much larger process and end result. So, Gary, why don't we maybe start with some definitions here. I think the audience might have heard of some types of large diameter. HDPE But let's go ahead and discuss. And actually, for anybody who wants to know, that's actually Jeremy Becker pointing at the sky. There he is in studio with us right now. Thanks, JP. So Gary HDPE in the large diameter has been used pretty frequently throughout the world. Also North America up to about 54, 63 inch. So what's what's new today? Well, well, you're right. HDPE has been around Europe's been using large diameter pipe for a couple of decades now. But, you know, here domestically in North America, we've had limitations on manufacturing capacity. Right. 63 inch being the largest solid wall pipe that was being produced here in North America. Well, that all changed a few years ago when Asahi came over, opened up a plant in a facility down in South Carolina. And that now has given us the opportunity to provide a much larger diameter HDPE pipe so people can get the benefits of HDPE that we've all been accustomed to in these much larger diameters. What were some of the limiting factors there? Gary I think it was wall thickness, right, that we really couldn't get above a certain wall thickness or thickness and slump and slow and sag with with it. Right? And you're exactly right. Well, when you when you think about the construction, the, the production of HDPE pipe, you know, running through an extruder and a dye head, you know, you're talking about molten material that's being passed through and needs to cool down and solidify before before it actually becomes pipe. And as those walls, wall thicknesses and pipe diameters get bigger and bigger, the traditional method of extruding you are constantly had where you're getting a four inch wall thickness at the bottom in a two inch wall thickness at the top, it's not very uniform pipe when you're trying to put that together. So that was some of the limiting was just really some of the manufacturing equipment. Now they're, you know, manufacturing. They're winding this on on drums and different things that allow to basically make any thickness that we need for a particular project. Yeah, fantastic. And I think we're really excited to talk about today the future. I think we have an idea of where large diameter fits in, but I think the fact is so pretty new. So, you know, at least in pressurized systems in North America, very large XXL above 63 inch has a great future ahead of them. So let's let's talk maybe a little bit about this. There are two types of of large diameter HDPE, Gary, what are we focusing on today? Well, you're right, Will. And some people, you know, think 18 inch pipe is large diameter if they've only been doing eight inch and down. But, you know, and what we're considering what we're dealing with, we're talking about that 63 inch and above. Right. That's the that's kind of the range that that we're focused on. And you we're talking links that you can get in this pipe, you know, up to 600 meter lengths. There's also solid, solid wall pipe, which is we're primarily we're focusing on there's also a whole other product line with it's called profile pipe where sill HDPE pipe. But instead of that solid wall that we have, it's more of a profile pipe and we see that in, in a lot of particular applications. It's not where we're dealing with and what we're focusing on today Will We'll actually probably have another insights in the near future on profile wall pipes specifically. And there's some different joining methods of these but the pipes are focusing on today is solid wall feasible. It's essentially just, you know a scaled up version of the stuff that I think most people are used to at this point with with the smaller and mid-range HDPE, is that correct? Absolutely. You got it. Okay, Gary, let's let's keep moving on here a little bit. You know, what are some of the important kind of big picture level thinking here of why a large diameter HDPE and XXL HDPE is being considered on a number of different projects throughout the United States? Well, it really goes back to, you know, the same features and benefits that we talked about with Standard or our traditional HDPE pipe. You're talking, you know, cost effective ness, durability. The leak free joint I think is is a real big one right when you get into those much larger diameters really people were limited in the choices, right? They were looking at, you know, fiberglass pipe or even steel pipe and now we can bring the benefits to everybody's realized in a smaller diameters HDPE into this much larger diameter arena that we never really played in before. And you can see them flexibility, lightweight light and lighter weight. I'd say say lightweight. They're still very heavy. But in comparison to some of those other materials and really the longevity, the the life expectancy of this pipe and then these applications, you heard Jordan mentioned, you know, his project being buried and then you've got Marv project up there in Canada, you know, was an actual sink and float that we'll talk more about. So totally different elements polyethylene pipe proves out well in both of those. So I want to bring in Jordan, if I may. Jordan, do you remember early on, I mean, from the very first time you thought about using HDPE, what were some of the important selling features, the features and benefits to you, why FDB was considered. So we did a cost material analysis during the design phase of the Standard Core Service Canal project, where we looked at welded steel pipe, fiberglass pipe and HDPE pipe. We eliminated welded steel pipe due to cost pretty aren't pretty early on in the process. And then we actually did a full design for fiberglass pipe as well as solid wall HDPE pipe and we put, we put both of those to pipe materials out to bid and we let the contractors bid and, and between the contractor pricing and the, the, the cost of the pipe material itself, we let them make the decision. It ended up that the solid wall HDPE pipe coming from you know South Carolina clear across you know shipped one stick at a time clear across to Utah on the other side of the country was was more cost effective than than the fiberglass pipe that we looked at. Really good to know. I appreciate the information. Mark, you have anything to add on Why HDPE was was even considered very early on interestingly enough on our project is actually was a design build project where AECOM and Gram construction in Canada were partners in the project. And when we first got the project in 2013, we were actually contemplating using concrete coated steel as the outfall. And as luck would have it or fortune would have it, I guess the project got shelved for about four years due to some regulatory issues and it was brought back on stream in about 2017, if I recall correctly, And by that time AGRU had moved their one of their extruders into South Carolina and then built polyethylene became more attractive. So when we looked at it with steel, initially, a good chunk of it until we got to a sufficient depth to get around current wave concerns. We had a concrete coated pipe and beyond that it was just a dielectric coating, epoxy coating on the rest of the pipeline and we had to meet a design life of 75 to 100 years. So we also had on that I forget what the number was, but many thousands of of their many tens of thousands of pounds of aluminum anodes that had to go on as well. So fortunately over that delay brought polyethylene on in those larger sizes on stream. And it was a pretty easy decision to switch from steel to polyethylene to mainly get around the corrosion issues and the construct ability issues of being able to fuze it float and sink operation which which not available with feel. So as sort of luck would have it be became our became available for us. So yeah and we're awfully happy that it did so we're going to talk about it a little bit later on as well. So let's keep let's keep going. I appreciate that, at least the early feedback on that. So, Gary, let's talk maybe about maybe some of the considerations that if if I'm an audience member and I'm thinking to myself, right, I might have an HDPE project, right? A large diameter project coming up, you know, what are some things that I need to know about large diameter HDPE that might be a little different here. I think the first and foremost is maybe we should talk about some logistics and transportation. And as you can see here by the by the pictures, you know, this isn't as as simple as stacking a bunch of four inch pipe on top of one another and getting it shipped out the door from any location. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the nut hurdles, but the challenges and considerations that you need to take to to prevent any sort of damage that pipe during shipment? Right. I mean, you know, both Marvin Jordan referenced, you know, the shipping that pipe all the way across, you know, cross country from South Carolina all the way out to their their job sites. And, you know, that's not a that's a formidable task when you're looking at trucking and how you protect that pipe and, you know, potential cribbing and how much you're going to be able to get. And in both those instances, I believe is one, stick a pipe on on a truck. I mean, if we looked at any jobs and these jobs have been done all over the world with large diameter pipe, you can see on that photo on the right, this pipe can be you know, can be shipped and pulled by tug across the ocean. And we've seen that and we've seen instances where, you know, some of those streams got broken off in a storm and, you know, big pipe end up washing up on somebody's beach and nobody knew what the heck it was. Those are all things that, you know, you had to encounter. And now at least having the ability to truck it is something that makes that a little more favorable to to deal with than what it used to be, But still something that you have to contend with. Jordan, do you want to maybe talk a little bit about and I'm going to pull up in this photo here that you know, the internal bracing and the supports that were required on on the pipeline that you shipped out to STEININGER. Yeah. So that was one of the concerns. You know, this this being the first project, over 65 inch diameter in the United States, at least to this this length that we're talking about. Everyone was kind of worried about the pipe keeping its ability. And so bracing was was put in on the on the ends of the pipe. And then when the pipes unloaded, they rotated 90 degrees and and construct wooden cribbing to to let it sit around the haunches of the pipe so that it stays oval in the field. So, you know, on a on a I can't say this is typical, but first first thinner wall pipe in the 54 inch, even 63 I've seen when you unload some of this stuff, it it it tends to to lose some of it so Valerie and goes egg shaped a little bit. That was a concern that we had on this project. But when this pipe was unloaded, our guy out there in the field would check it periodically. It was sitting, you know, in the staging areas for up to two months. And that the 78 inch pipe kits, it kept its oval ness within a half inch diameter in any direction. And so I was impressed with with the manufacturing process for magor America of how how well the pipe kept its openness. This was this happened to be d r 26 that we're talking about in the in the 78 inch. And so, yeah, it was it was quite impressive. And it's overall it's, it's kept its openness as it's been installed and compacted in the ground as well. I've heard really good things Jordan, about you know actually yesterday we had it was funny, we had a, we had a 32 inch dr9 cross section for a tensile test. And then we had actually a potential test from your 78 inch project as an as an example. And just seeing that the wall thicknesses, I mean they were very similar, but yours was, you know, twice that the outside diameter with being d r 26. So it's really good to know that even a thinner wall like that can withstand some of the elements during shipment. You know, the sign the same, you know, types of considerations we have to have with smaller diameter. So really good to hear. Yeah. Mark will that really comes into play when you trying to get that pipe into a fusion machine. The things that Jordan referenced right, in trying to get that in the jaws and get the jaws closed around that pipe to take that, you know, a little bit of pulling out it can handle. But if it's too much, that can add some complexity to the project. Marv, did you ever investigate looking at shipping this via the ocean, was that was that ever considered just out of curiosity? It was. And this was a nice, cool decision, actually, because they were the pipe supplier. They they actually did look at the options of, of floating it to the site. But the options were Panama Canal or going all the way around South Africa or South America. Sorry. And and the cost of going through the Panama Canal just was, in my understanding anyway, was in excess of what it would have cost to move the pipe trash trolley to to Vancouver Island, which is, you know, both getting it, you know, to to to the city of Vancouver and then getting it across the ferry to the island, which was, you know, another logistics thing and another point that was brought up by our marine contractor, too, was if they didn't, they needed a fusion machine on titanium to do specials. And if they ever had a problem, something happened during manufacture that they wanted to have a fusion machine on site anyway. And just in the event that, you know, if they did bring it by Marine that they you know, there is a potential that something gets damaged and you have to refuse it. And so just a logistics just worked out that terrestrial trucking was a bit more advantageous in this case. You know, Gary's got spring break down in Panama every year. That's where he goes down to, you know, relax. So next time you need some help getting through the canal, I'm sure. Gary. And so we did have a good question with those guys down there. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure you are. Here we have a question. Come in about the U.V. resistance. Now, Jordan, I've seen some photos of the Steinberger pipe. At one point it was stacked in a wide open storage facility. Gary This is still the same black HDPE with carbon black that allows for unlimited storage capacity, right? Absolutely. Yeah. No, no issue with pipe degradation with U.V.. That pipe can sit out there indefinitely without any risk of damage to it whatsoever. Great. Keep the questions coming, everyone. We really appreciate it. So I suspect we're going to spend a little bit of time here. So, Gary, there are some installation comments that I think we need to discuss here. This is maybe, you know, not as simple as installing a four or six inch or 12 inch polyethylene system. This there are some more considerations to take here. Gary, what are some things that come to mind for you right away? Well, I mean, it really depends on the job scenario, right? We've got two guest panelists that have totally different situations. You know, one was a floating sink into the ocean and the other one was a was a excavate and bury situation with their pipe. So, you know, totally different issues that they have to deal with. The floating sink you're looking at, you know, concrete weights and you know how you're going to you know, what the size those need to be, how you get that all to sink, you know, the proper pace and direction. And then they all the excavation and moving that pipe around, you're looking at, you know, obviously multiple pieces of equipment that that are needed to to maneuver that pipe. Still, the great thing about this, the pipe can be joined above ground. Right. You're you're fuzing it outside of a trench on the barge job in the ocean. You're you're fuzing that pipe on a barge and stringing it out into the water. So you have that ability much easier to to do that type of work than what you may encounter with the fiberglass or the steel pipe that either one of those projects were also being considered on. So, again, just certain elements that have to be accounted for. And I'm sure our guests can have even more enlightenment on what they what they had to deal with. Yeah, I'd like to start Jordan. When I was out on site, I know that proper compaction was really important to the crew. Do you want to maybe explain some of the installation challenges that that you faced and that were were unique to using large diameter HTP for your project? Yeah, our project. First of all, one of the challenging things is it's it was we had to construct it and stay within a 100 foot right of way and around and curving right of way because the canal curves it's not a it's not a straight canal installation. And so we actually had 67 different 15 degree fittings that were required for this three mile long section. We had two of the the Talon machines on site and one one technology machine on site. So I guess the challenges were, you know, keeping keeping the pipe pipe within the existing canal prism and installation of those fittings. We actually have the photo over. So that's a photo there. And as well as the other one on the left there is the techno doing machine that was used to pop out and fuze on those 15 degree fittings. And then the the links between the fittings needed to be precise so that it it stayed in the in the trench that was constructed by the contractor in addition to those challenges we had, the subsurface conditions were very challenging on this project. We had trenching or sorry, collapsing trench walls and had to install a bunch of stabilization rock that that needed to go in before the pipe was placed in and so that it would, you know, have keep the integrity of the pipe and and you know, make it make it possible for compaction to be had there and keep the openness and roundness during the installation. It was it was really cool to see that that dance occur between you know and by the way, I want to point out, I don't think this picture does it justice doesn't Jordan I mean, this machine is enormous. It really it's like a two story machine. This is really incredible to see the general contractor, ISCO fusion technicians all working in tandem to get these joints made up. Yeah, well, I see that stepladder. If you are on there, that have to be a bigger one. Yeah, you're right about that. Gary, thanks for. Thanks for always making me feel really good about myself in front of hundreds of people. I really appreciate it. If you guys had a little bit of an easier time, I guess with using the buoyancy of water, but also that presented some some unique challenges for you in terms of keeping that float, you know, floating on top of the surface and then sinking it. Do you want to I'm not going to touch base on this greater detail later. Do you want to maybe talk about some of the challenges that you faced? Yeah, I mean, there's some some quite interesting challenges, I guess. So I mean, polyethylene by nature is a small amount lighter to water. You know, density is about specific gravity of both .96 or just a little bit lighter than water. So even when it's folded, floats and so because it's in seawater, so seawater is a bit more dense, so is even a bit more so. So for our application, we were also started in fairly shallow water. So it's affected by ocean waves and ocean currents. So it had to be quite heavily weighted until we got to about a 20 meter depth. And so our weight beating and the pipe when it was empty, full of air, it actually would support, quite frankly, for sport these weights or just from a context to size. So we went from weight spacings of about 3 to 6 meters or ten, 10 to 20 feet, and each weight was about 4.7 cubic meters. So they weren't like little weights. There were 4.7 cubic meters of, you know, like five or six cubic or yards of of of concrete. And another interesting fact of the project is we needed to store that entire length, 1900 meters of height somewhere until we we install this. We had to lay down issues. So the contractor had actually used a site before in that new space, which was about halfway of Vancouver Island to assemble this. And so once the whole string was assembled, the weight protection was tested. They had actually towed 120 kilometers to Victoria to deploy it in its final position. So it was pretty interesting. Yes, some really unique things that you face. And we're going to show some photos later on. They're pretty cool. Jerry, real quick, we got a couple of questions that I'd like to address here. While we're kind of on topic and maybe Jordan, I think that this conversation might have come up with you. Nicola, I was asking earlier, shipping on railcars instead of one stick at a time. Jordan Did you ever look into that topic yourself? We did not. That was something, you know, maybe Donny could chime in on working with Agora America. That's not something we specifically looked at to see if there was a a cost savings there. I know I think I did some math and it was like $9,000 per per, per truckload coming from South Carolina to Utah. But I did not look at that personally. I'm not sure if Agora and Esko looked at that for shipping across to our project site. Derek, I mean, we've seen you redone his sign language. He's going to give you some sign signs in the back and you can you can translate. I mean. Well, I could. I mean, we've been doing this a long time. I've looked at rail for just even standard HDPE pipe bundles in the past as a better option and, and you know many times it doesn't end up being plus you don't have as good a control on scheduling You know sometimes that pipe will stop and it gets stuck in a in a railyard or some spur somewhere and then if it's not a rail close enough to the job site now you're still having to schedule additional trucks and then offload it. And the cost, typically, at least in the jobs that I've been involved in in the past, has been, you know, been any savings and actually been more costly to look at the rail option, Gary, Aaron is asking about 54 inch d r 41. I think this brings up a good point. So really thin wall, large diameter. Are there any fusion considerations to take with with maybe a size like that? I mean, first of all, being that thin, the 41 is definitely a very much thinner wall material for that kind of weight. It it can be fuzed, but your ability, you're definitely going to have to have that pipe, you know, crib much like what you saw in some of the pictures there with the ends of that pipe. It's it's not very common when we see a d r 41 with that any of that size of pipe. And Gary, let's talk real quickly because our good friend, the anonymous attendee, is currently asking what sizes are available. Actually current MAC sizes in current polyethylene raise temperature. I, I didn't know if you had the answer to that. Oh yeah. The pert pipe there we're limited more on the wall thickness with the pert to about a two inch wall. We have the largest pert that we've manufactured has been upped was 48 inch and we just recently did that d r 21 I believe, or 42 I'm sorry. 4221 Thank you for 42 and zero 2142 And that's the largest part. And again, it's really about that drywall thickness because that resin extruded a little bit differently than standard 4710 resin does. Right. Well, guys, let's let's continue on here. Really, please keep the questions coming. We really appreciate the the engagement there, Gary, There's probably some design considerations to consider when when using large diameter XXL htp. What are some of the ones that come to mind in your in your opinion? Yeah, we've touched on a few of them. Will the load requirements write what you know, even what soil loads are going to be put on that particular pipe, You know, burial conditions, the pressure ratings, again, the ability to to kind of wind or wrap that pipe in its production can make just really about any wall thickness that's needed. But all those have to come into play when you're deciding what what size of pipe you're looking at, particularly the D.R. And then it's the performance in the flow. What's what's going through it? What's your flow velocities, what you know, all those things that we take into consideration for any pipe design, soil and ground water pressure, you know, expansion and contraction, is it going to stay above ground? Is it going to be buried? You know, all those things that we take into within the pipe that we put in the ground. Jordan, I'm curious to know, you said it was originally steel as basis of design, maybe shared the one thing that you learned that you think is most important considering, you know, designing HDPE instead of steel. That might be a key difference that that you encountered on this project. Yeah. So our project has mildly corrosive soils out there. You know, a corrosion protection system certainly could have, could fit that and everything would have been fine for that project. But I guess the owner was due to cost that they wanted to go to HDPE, HDPE Pipe for this project. And so in our we're relatively low pressure. If it was a much higher pressure project, you know, maybe steel would have made more sense. But it's relatively low pressure for this particular project. And so HDPE made sense from that standpoint as well. Yeah, I've heard corrosive soils quite a bit lately. Jordan It's interesting you mention that more of anything sticking out to you from a design standpoint that you thought was fundamental to working with HDPE compared to other materials? Well, in our case, again, it was largely corrosion. Resistance is why we switched from steel to to HDPE. And then the ease of of of installation with the float and sink operation design wise, our pipe was designed that the actual design drivers installation, the installation conditions, the stresses under installation through that S-curve flow and sink operation is actually the governing a design factor. But we did look at it from the perspective also of a seismic of resistance for HDP is a very good product from a seismic resistance standpoint. You know, HDP can withstand safely, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of strain without much concern at all. So and in our case, we actually do have victory. Is very earthquake susceptible, both, you know, seismic settlements. And we actually crossed a fault. So we did consider all those things in with HDP. And, you know, because of its flexibility, it was also, you know, another good choice just from the perspective of of seismic resistance, of being able to withstand, you know, seismic settlements and seismic differential movements and faulting and yeah, so it it was a good fit for our job. That's great. Josh Goldberg was asking that question earlier about the seismic resistance of HDP, specifically when it relates to large diameter. And again, Gary, I think we're going to let's I think it's a good place to get into some of the features and benefits really, of of this large diameter HDP. You know, this is the same HDP that we know and love. It's just a lot bigger. So you want to maybe go through this a little bit and talk about why HDP is a good material for for, you know, many water projects and other projects like. Right. I mean, you know, the first thing that always comes to mind, well, when we're talking about benefits of HDP pipe is the way that we join it. Being able to fuze your pipe and basically make it a continuous string, a pipe from one end, from point A to point B and, you know, that's a leak free joint that's not going to have to be worried about. We're not worrying about corrosion. Both of these gentlemen have mentioned, you know, corrosion concern, whether it be soils or even just being in sea water. We're not worried about that pipe. The life expectancy of that pipe is going to be the same as it as it is on day one. B, even though it's in those kind of elements, the hydraulic flow, the smoothness. No, no internal corrosion on that pipe that you may encounter with steel or, you know, other metal pipes, not an issue with the polyethylene pipe. So you get that long service life. So in the hydraulic flow, the smoothness is going to be consistent for the life of that pipe. No tuberculose, no build up inside that pipe and flexibility. Each one of these jobs did require some sense of flexibility in their in their project design, whether it's the floating sink and you're putting that down into the bottom of the ocean or bending around as you as you saw in some of the construction sites, in the you know, in the irrigation channel, the Jordan was dealing with. So for anyone that hasn't been through an HDP power hour or a just, you know, balance of properties presentation with this going encourage you to get on our on some of our YouTube information and other on demand webinars to look at information. It's great all the characteristics of HDP and smaller diameters is being translated up just different types of, you know, design considerations there to consider with, with using larger diameters. Gary Custom fabrications and other thing that we can do, I know Marv used someone on his project, Jordan had a couple settings as well. Do you want to talk a little bit about custom fabrication? And with HDP and, and I we're, I want to push through this so we can get to Marvin Jordan being able to talk a little bit about their specific projects as well. Right. You know, custom fab as we've always said. Well, if you can draw it, we can build it. And that's typically what we run into, you know, on on the the Victoria Project, you know, we had some unique saddles baffles that that were needed on the pipe. You could see that I think in the picture there. But large prefabricated structures, manifolds, headers, all those different things we can do. We can custom make fittings, particular angles if necessary, can be done. This really helps in the ease in the installation and minimizes waste on the particular project. Jordan Use some fittings, I think, some reducers, some flanges. Marv, you had some custom kind of the header system or diffuser. I can't remember. I was talking I had what it was. Can you elaborate a little more on that? Sure. So in our project we were required to have about 120 meter long diffuser. And traditionally and in in these types of installation the main pipe. So the main pipe get sunk. It needs to be airtight or watertight because it's actually pressurized while we're sinking and that controls strain, pipelines drain while while the pipe is actually thinking through that S-curve type configuration. But what that means when we have diffusers are just open ports, we have to come up with a way of closing those to be pressure tight during the installation process. And our job is a little bit more complicated because the hydraulics are the pipeline required us to use these duckbill valves as well, which complicated our sealing off these diffusers. So Isco had manufactured or we designed and Isco manufactured some custom saddle connections and you can see some metallic framing that and all that metallic framing was sort of sacrificial to support, you know, a rod going through the Duckbill to seal the pipe from the inside. And after it was on the bottom, safety on the bottom. Then we had an ROV going on under the knot on the top of that bolt and and pushed a push to play through into the pipe and everything became operational. So it's a bit of an interesting thing. And we also had I think we had 130 degree bend on the job. We had to change direction. So yeah. Jordan you had some reducers, flanges, elbows and anything to note on those? Yeah. So the, the saddles on this project are all electric fusion, you know, going from four inch diameter up to 30 inch diameter. Those were, from what I understand, custom designed by grew in Agora, Austria. There were several trips, I think, that were made back to determine how how to manufacture those saddles. And they were custom designed for the project. And then I mentioned earlier that the 67 different mainline 15 degree fittings, then I think we had a reducer that that went from 63 to 78 inch diameter, that that was also custom designed at Agora, Austria. So great. Gary, you were an expert at finger painting and color painting and I'm sure high school and maybe in higher education. So you're right, Gary can draw it. We can likely build it. Flanges, elbows, different sorts of connection points. Really. We're interested in being able to, you know, make any type design possible. With HTP Now, there are some limitations with larger diameter equipment. But, you know, let's let's have those conversations and see what we can to assist. Gary, we're going to talk about three different examples of fusion equipment here. But really the main point of the main point of this is to say that there is a good bit of equipment that Isco has in house that can fuze very, very large diameter pipe sizes. And we're talking again, folks, up to 120 inch solid wall htp piping. SEGURA Do you want to walk through maybe some of these examples and and which might be better suited for, for a particular situation? Yeah I mean, you can see, you know, that was another thing that limited, I think, large diameter. Not only could we not anybody manufacturing it here in the US, there wasn't any equipment in the US available to Fuze those larger diameters. And then a few years ago the McElroy Talon, it's a little bit different than what we're traditionally used to in the fusion method, right? All the other fusion equipment, we're used to lifting the pipe, bringing it into the machine, and then doing the fusion there and then pulling the pipe away from that and then dropping in the next piece of pipe and continually fuzing the string. With the Talon, this unit actually drives over the pipe. So your pipe is pretty strung out and you simply drive the machine over, pick up the pipe, and the two sections lift them up, do the fusion, lay it back on the ground and continue driving forward to the next joint. So quite a bit different than what we've been used to with. And then both of the units that we see also on these pictures, the windows and the do those are European machines. As I said earlier, Europe's been, you know, quite a bit ahead in terms of use of large diameter pipe in Europe and so forth. And so this equipment has been prevalent there. We've now brought some of that here in order to do some of these particular projects, like the 88 inch one in Victoria and again, to do some of the fittings and fusion on the 78 inch job for Steininger. Yeah, we stationed all these at our sales persons yards around the United States in their backyards, sometimes in their garages and totally getting, you know, these are, these are constantly being used on, on big job sites. And really, please contact isco if you're thinking about making any fusions. I think this is really where we have an opportunity to help decide and partner with engineering ownership contracting to discuss what options might be best for for the installation. And Gary, we mentioned this a little bit earlier on, but the features and benefits of this is just what we're there's new technologies able to make thicker and thicker pipe sizes. Yep. It's both the resin, you know, moving to that 4710 which is has a low slump resin as it's defined in the industry, allows us to extrude thicker pipes and then even the extruding equipment itself that enables us to to produce those thicker walls that some of these projects require. Again, things that we just didn't have here in the US just a few years ago. So I want to be sure we allow and here actually sorry, Gary, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. Here's some examples of large diameter fittings. So these can be flange to elbows. They might be outlets. Jordan mentioned earlier some saddles, diffusers. Again, these fittings are all available. Actually, we had a good question that I want to take the time now to this is either for Jordan or Mars for thermal conditions. Did you all decide to install anchor blocks, near structures or any transitions in other materials? Was there any concern of of expansion, lineal expansion and needing to restrain that? Yeah, I can go first on that. So we have penetrations into concrete structures in three different locations on our projects. And yeah, we have a big, big anchor block with flex restraints is what they decided to use on on the 78 inch diameter pipe. So flexible restraints and then those are cast into a reinforced concrete anchor block that's that's in a buried condition. Two, keep the, you know, the pipe from pulling out of that structure and a longitudinal expansion and contract contraction of the pipe in the future. Moreover, any four year project, we didn't use any anchor blocks per se. We only had one connection that we had any concerns with the from the sewage plant out to where we connected. This pipe was a about 120 meter long wet exit steel microtonal drive. And from that we had to put a a restraint coupler to connect HTP to in in our case of the actual the benefit of of the ocean installation is there's not what is in the water there's not a big thermal change like temperature to water in the ocean. You know changes from you know, maybe of course of, you know, a few degrees over the course of the of a season. So it wasn't too substantial. But even with that from the length of pipe when we fuzed it onshore, sitting in the sun to sinking on the bottom, we had estimated, you know, a change in length of our pipe, that 1.9 kilometers of the boat, if I recall correctly, about two meters. So it's pretty substantial for sure. But in our case, we didn't really need to have any issues anywhere. So, yeah, great. Great to know. Thanks for thanks for answering that. So again, large diameter fittings and I assume that you both are big fans of of the data logger and using the data logger before jumping in Gary you want to explain what the data logger is and some other quality measures that that have taken place here. Right. So when you're looking at at Fusion, we're talking about joining, we get a question a lot will as well. How do you know that joint, that fusion joint is good. And one of the best ways that we can do that is with a data logger which logs and monitors that fusion process being done, that the right temperatures, the right times, the right pressures, all the key elements of making a successful fusion, that they're that they're done properly. And you can see that and you can control that with the data logger and I believe you know, I think a dialog was used on both both of these particular projects as well. As you know, you can't do a burn back test on a well to when you were looking for joint quality, right. To prove out that. Well, you know, so we use a high speed tensile impact pole or we can take those cross-sections, send them in and actually put them in a in a stress test and see if that joint holds up properly as it should. And that's what you see depicted in that tensile machine there on the right. Marr of I think in one of our rehearsals you had mentioned you wouldn't dare if you use a CPU without a data logger, you're a big fan. Well for sure, certainly. And when you get into these large sizes, I mean the the consequence of having a post installation failure are so high that, you know, you can't really afford to have a secondary or a substandard fuzed into. So for sure. Jordan any other quality measures that you felt were important for the sonic or job? I don't think anything specifically. I understand I'm not an expert on the technical degree, but I understand that there's an internal data logger that that is built into that, that if if the fuze is not in within tolerance, it will actually prevent the Fuze from becoming complete. And so, yeah, data loggers, I think, are very critical for four projects, as Marvin mentioned. Yeah, I want to give both of you the opportunity quickly before we do that. Barret, I'm forgetting a poll question. Would you might mind pulling up our next and last poll question of the day, which is how likely are you to use HDP? Let's just maybe say on an extra, extra large project moving forward? So right now we have the majority of the audience, about 90, you know, about over 100 people now saying very likely a couple don't have projects coming up, 6% or six out of the 240 that answered this question are not believers. Gary. So, you know, might might just not be the right fit. But maybe we can talk a little bit about these two projects and allow both the the members here. Jordan, maybe we'll start with you. Do you want to maybe just talk a little bit more in detail about what the project was, You know, the accomplishment, the goal, the objectives and any other items that you feel that we have not covered here today? Yeah. So the state occurs Service canal is 12 miles long, north to south. Eventually we'll be tying into a dam that's, you know, the water is going to be held in a reservoir or it is held in a reservoir well where the the project's being constructed for water savings. There's there's a lot of water infiltration that that leaks, you know, in the existing clay line canal into the ground. So in 2017, we constructed the first phase. The owner actually decided to start it away from the dam and move back towards the dam. So there were some some hydraulic challenges that we've had to undertake as as we move back towards the dam. But we started on the bottom end with three miles of 48 to 63 inch pipe and. This this current phases is three more miles, which is all 78 inch diameter d r 26 or 2000 millimeter. I'm just trying to think if there's any anything else that we haven't covered, I'm not sure we I think we've covered everything else that we've we've covered a lot of it. Jordan, is there any maybe advice that you would give to those that are looking into HDP, large dam or HDP for the first time? I'm sure there was quite a learning process. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the things that we've learned, if you can get for this size sized pipe, more than 100 feet of feet of right of way would be nice, but they were constrained with private property on both sides of the canal and then existing. So this this particular project, the Bureau of Reclamation has an easement that it's approximately 100 to 110 feet wide. This is a photo at the beginning of the project here on the left where, you know, the contractor is trying to figure out the limits of of the track hose. And this was a photo taken, aerial photo taken from a drone. That was the first time that they walked the pipe over and and lifted it up and installed it in the trench. So there's seven track hose. They're picking this pipe up in a pretty good section. And actually you can see three different 15 degree fittings that are in this in the curvature of the of the canal at this location. Since then, I think they've got a couple of larger tobaccos and have been able to reduce number of triangles a little bit. But and then the photo on the right is a reducer a 78 by eight by 63 introducer that that is to connect on to the first phase that was constructed in 2017. So well Jordan we really appreciate Go ahead Gary. Well, I was just going to ask Jordan, so, you know, hearing about the 15 degrees and I'm sure some people in the audience might be like, well, why wouldn't you just put a, you know, a 45 on there? Well, what was your consideration there? Was it the you know, I can't tell exactly the the tightness of the curve, but you might help that might help the audience understand that 15 degrees typically aren't as in our world. So, yeah, so we left the number of fittings. We, you know, we had the curvature of the of the canal. There's obviously the larger the pipe, the the larger the bending radius of that pipe. Right. And so we had those constraints too, to deal with. And we allowed the, the supplier and the manufacturer of the pipe to and the contractor in this case, all of all of the team came together and it was determined, you know, as a as a team as a whole to go with more, you know, smaller degree fittings than than than just putting in a 45 degree fitting. I won't go into all the logistics of the hows and whys, but sure, as a team, a team as a whole, that's what we all came to the conclusion that we wanted to use for for this installation to make those bands perfect. Great. Well, Jordan, we're we're a little closer on time here. That's probably my fault. But I really appreciate you jumping on to to, to talk about the sonic job. We really appreciate your support with HDP. And stick around just in case we have a couple of other questions. Mark, the BC, John McLaughlin, point outfall, do you want to talk maybe a little bit more about this job and the specifics, I'm sure have touched on a few of them. But one of the interesting things is because of the length of pipe that we had to assemble, and I think it was about a three month string installation or construction process and you can appreciate that in big pipe like this. They were you know, I think they're averaging about a foot and a half a day, like one day to get 1 to 1 day, day at two. So it's a pretty slow process. And when you get into those big fuzes the heat sink time and the cooldown time is pretty substantial. So we actually had to find somewhere to assemble this pipe. And you know, again was 120 kilometers away from the final location. And once that string was assembled and tested, then we had a, you know, a to it I think it took a 48 hours or so to talk to Victoria. And and a picture on the right there is sort of the final installation. So the inner tugboat on the left there, that was sort of where the the micro tunnel part left off and way out in the ocean. There is, you know, two kilometers away or coming to a halfway was actually one of the largest tugs in the in the western seaboard there. There was 120 metric ton tugboat that we needed for the end pull to while close enough to to soak and fulfill that and think process a big pipe. You know I guess many recommendations for me quality control you know becomes much more enhanced. You just can't afford a failure. So you don't want it. You know, the center says do a quality control test and an audit. You know, I would recommend that that be done just to make sure that, you know, the product is, you know, you can't really afford a failure. Set up the paper so long And as a very long beam you can appreciate a, you know, a pipe that's 80 inches diameter or larger and, you know, the contractor actually had quite a bit of an issue with visual set up of, you know, not being in a nice plane and trying to align the pipes and diffuse a machine. And, you know, you can you can only pull down with a clamp so much before you start rounding the pipe and getting an odor tolerance or that fuze And each set up is very important to have everything, you know nicely in playing for and for a long distance because you can appreciate as it's sagging, you know, maybe, you know, two, three, four, pipe away. It's still causing bending moments, you know, at the Fuzing machine. So it's kind of interesting for sure. So, yeah, more of we had a question earlier. Last question for you here. What was the design life that you ultimately settled on on this design here with HTP, Do you recall? Well, our requirement and our design build contract was a 74 year, five year design life, and we had no concern with the with meeting that. I mean, HDP has been, you know, in existence since the, you know, forties, I believe. And, you know, although although there's been some growing pains with it, I mean the quality of the resins now I have no issue, you know, a 25 year or longer design life. Yeah. Great. Well we really appreciate both of you deciding to go with HTP. I think Gary will will speed through this other applications. We're hoping one of you guys can tell us, the audience members here, you know, what's next for HTP and XL form. You know, there is a lot of different opportunities out there for, we think water, water transfer. Water systems are good use. But, you know, you can see here on this slide, there's there's plenty of other options out there for you. So real quick, as we're running out of time, just we'd be remiss to say this great company that we work for at work for ISCO Industries as a national solutions provider of small, tiny, small mid range and XL HDPE, anything with polyethylene pipe. We're very passionate about it. Rental equipment, technical service, custom HTP fabrication and of course ISCO insights. So we really appreciate you being here with us today. I believe most of your questions have been answered with Please connect with us on the variety of social media tabs. I think the only one that I still have is LinkedIn. So I don't I there we go. I still have LinkedIn here. Otherwise we'd be friends. I'd be friends with you, but go ahead and connect with ISCO Insights on on Social Media. Gary, is there anything else that I missed today? Man, I don't think so, other than seeing my my smiley face in person, but that we really appreciate our guests today. They've really been great to hear from them, their experiences with HCP pipe and predict particularly this large diameter will so thank you to both Jordan and MA for joining us today and sharing their insights with us. A huge thank you to both of you. So once again, Marv Jordan, thanks so much. Any engineers in the audience looking for CEOs and PDA issues? Please go ahead and use this system here. There's a little scary. What are those called QR codes? That's what I'm thinking of. QR codes. Let's go ahead and scan that QR code. It'll take you to our Web site and give us maybe a week or two to fill those out. There's a lot of requests and it's somewhat of a manual process and a big thanks to all of our folks in Weatherspoon, Tammy, Jeremy Barrett, Heather, Donnie Kaiser, Johnny, we'll get you on live on camera next time. So, guys, we'd like to thank you on behalf of ISCO Thanks for joining us so much. And We will see you next time on ISCO Insights. In the meantime, be safe out there and as always, happy news. And we'll see you next time.