Baffled by electrofusion, the specialized process used to join HDPE pipes or fittings? Questions about the technical complexity, safety concerns, or variability in equipment and standards associated with electrofusion? This webinar is for you.
We'll help you "crack the code on electrofusion," providing a comprehensive understanding of electrofusion, addressing common concerns and sharing insights to help you navigate the process with confidence.
You'll learn:
Baffled by electrofusion, the specialized process used to join HDPE pipes or fittings? Questions about the technical complexity, safety concerns, or variability in equipment and standards associated with electrofusion? This webinar is for you.
We'll help you "crack the code on electrofusion," providing a comprehensive understanding of electrofusion, addressing common concerns and sharing insights to help you navigate the process with confidence.
You'll learn:
ISCO INSIGHT. So glad you're joining us today. My name is Will Bodak. As always, I'll be your host on this journey. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedules to come watch our program here and learn a little bit about electric fusion, all about demystifying electric fusion today and talking a little bit about those processes here, first and foremost. So let's get through a quick set of instructions. All your audio and video is turned off to enhance our quality for feedback or troubleshooting on Zoom or any technical issues you're having, please go ahead and use that chat box down below. And lastly, we really appreciate it. If you would use the Q&A tab to answer questions or to ask questions. Our panelists have experts back here. J.B. and Ethan will be answering questions via video, and they'll do their best to get you all the answers to the questions that we're unable to cover live on air. As always, I need a lot of help in this program today. We're changing it up a little bit. We're turning it over to Tammy Tipton with ISCO. Tammy, welcome to the program. And thank you. Will. It's been a while. It has been a little bit. So normally Gary's in your seat and you know today, Derek, what are you doing here? It's Insight's day. I know you were kicked off the program. You didn't know the ASTM. That's 3190 when I got benched. Yeah. I'm sorry. Have a good day. She calls the program. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Continue to do great. So we really appreciate Tammy being here live in studio today. Tell me, why don't you give us your background in this in the industry and tell us why people should listen to you today? So I've been in polyethylene for about 17 years, spent a tremendous amount of time, say ten plus years, dealing with electrocution in particular just an overall polyethylene sitting guy. My background and what I've done my entire career. How many times have you read the PI handbook? Total wage mean way too many. I can quote too many pages with too many different equations. Basically, I know it by heart. Yeah. And just so everyone's aware, Timmy is the guy we go to. Even more in Gary. At ISCO when we have questions about anything related to HDPE. So we're in really, really good hands today. So, Timmy, we're here today to talk about cracking the code on electric fusion. I think our audience is going to have a lot of questions. There's also a wide range of variability with kind of electric fusion applications, sizes and uses. What are we going to talk about today? But give us maybe an umbrella on what we should consider? Yeah. So I'd say that what we're looking at is with the variability you have half inch couplings through 30 inch and larger couplings, you have all sorts of different installation conditions, muddy conditions, dry conditions, sunny weather, sandy weather, whatever else it might be. And so what we want to talk about as a whole is just General Electric fusion. And what works well in any specific application, you got to go through it. You got to make sure that what is happening is right for electric fusion and right for the application as well. Absolutely. And it's going to be we could literally when I'm putting this presentation together, we could have gone on probably for a full day on the different nuances would have been couplers. It's really an art form and it's going to be impossible for us to basically say, you know, a definitive list of rules based on this size, this application. So we'll walk through that process. But please, everyone keep that in mind that there is a tremendous amount of variability, whether you're putting in maybe a a natural gas system versus a 24 inch coupling at at a landfill. Absolutely. And so with that, let's go ahead and get started. I think we often want to and my clicker is not working here. We always want to go ahead and get started on what is electric fusion and you're going to be having some issues with the crazy here. Me Do you want to maybe start us off on what electric fusion is, What we get this going? Yeah. So electric using just a form of fusion which uses electric current to provide heat into a a joining device. In this case is a coupling. What we try to do here is we're using the electric current. A particular amount for a particular time creates a fusion environment to join the joint polyethylene. Yeah, So thanks for doing that. We never know we're going to run in here. I've got to go inside technically. So we've got these fittings, right. What is fusion to me and why is electric fusion maybe a little different than than thermo or but fusion? So with electric fusion is or fusion as a whole is, you know, just joining of polyethylene on a molecular level to make sure it's one and it becomes a complete homogenous system. Electric fusion. As you can see, there's this in different forms here. Essentially what we're doing is we're taking polyethylene, we're cleaning the polyethylene ends, and then we're putting it through the processor. So then put a particular amount of current through a copper wire to to create this good fusion joint. One of the differences here is that when we're when we're going through our electricity process, cleanliness is of utmost importance. There's no expelling of polyethylene from a joint like you'd see in about fusion joint or saddle joint. So what we have to do is ensure that we're properly cleaned, properly peeled, and then using the the form of the coupling, we have these hot and cold zones, right? The hot the hot zone is actually where it's used and takes place. You build up with expansion, temperature expansion within the polyethylene temperature. You end up creating a heat, a pressure boundary there with the amount of heat. From there, you end up with these cold zones. These cold zones act like a dam to make sure that you can build pressure to create the proper fusion. Parameters, because just like we've explained all the time, in order for a successful fusion, you need a combination of heat and pressure. Heat time and if. There was any gaps there between that coupler and the pipe, there wouldn't be any pressure builds, correct. And you wouldn't get an appropriate fusion. So there's a ton of things to be able to, you know, take a look at. Yep. And make sure that you're building up enough pressure as you go along. So you want to maybe also explain the types of fittings that are out there from a standpoint of commercially available products that we can use with the. Alexa using predominately used in coupling form. However, we also have tapping these and like saddle type forms as well. So any time that you need to change your direction in a T, you can you can have those there's elbows or electrocution integrated in the elbows, integrated into three TS and then what we call tapping these. So for hot taps, things of that nature as well. So I'm going to go ahead and take this opportunity to debate. We're going to launch our first full question here. This is to the audience. We want to get to know our audience and engage. Remember, please use that Q&A tab so that we can go ahead and interact with you. This works great when we can bounce ideas and questions off one another. When was the last time you stepped or used a lecture for using products on a project? Most of the audience here tell me this is a first as never Spec's electric fusion fittings, at least not yet anyways. Several have. I would imagine that a lot of this is based on end use application. To. Natural gas systems. Utilities are speaking them every day, whereas you know Municipal force Maine is probably not using too much electric. Yeah, some of it is. Size dependent, some of it's going to be application dependent. Also, you know, when you're when you're also using on a daily basis and you're doing repair work or whatever else it might be when you're doing it in short order and one fusion and then moving a mile or two to do another electrocution can be a really good opportunity for that. Absolutely. So just so we're clear, electric fusions use a combination of electricity through the copper wires, basically to build up pressure in that fitting so that you can achieve a fusion. There. That's the basis of electric fusion and all fittings, whether they're saddles, couplings, 45 taps, these use a variation of that process. So we're going to talk today about the common questions and answers that everyone has on electric fusion. There's some misinformation out there. There's also a good amount of information that we want to make sure that the audience has at their disposal. So the first thing really is talking about common failures. Terrible. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of people out there have heard that there's there's electrocution failures from time to time. In your opinion, what are the three biggest areas that we can use to not see as many failures? So it's. Cleanliness. It's going to be peeling in this proper alignment. They're out there on screen. Cleanliness is absolutely paramount. You want to make sure that you have a clean joint because whatever contaminant that you may have on your pipe is going to be left. If you don't clean it up, if you don't plate it properly. Absolutely. And it's going to be in there forever. Forever. So no matter what you do. So let's start there. I love this picture by the way, somebody decided to use that electric fusion coupler as a little lunch table. Would you recommend. That? Again, all these things must be stored in their original packaging, preferably indoors, believe it or not, and some sort of temperature controlled environment prior to it going out onto the job site. If you saw that on a job site, what would your recommendation be? I would I would tell them to stop this, but but I'd also, topically with alcohol, ensure that there's no contaminant that's there, no hand oils, no no oil, no anything else there. Take some ISO on there and make sure that isn't dry. So let's go ahead and talk about cleanliness. This is this is paramount as we've see our friend Gary actually working hard for a change on the left. On the right, we just see a bunch of old used beat up old type. Would you recommend using in one area versus another? Absolutely. You want you want very clean pipe. You want a pipe that's not gouged, but where you can remove the contaminants that may or may not be present. The pipe on the right is going to be a lot more difficult. It's going to have a lot higher risk profile than something that that where it's more of a out of ditch type application. We're taking piece pipe that's fairly clean, able to clean it, peel it and and align it. Sure. So to me, let's stay on here for a second. How would you get that pipe on the right down to maybe the pipe on the left? Well, I think what I would do is take some water and wash it off and then use some isopropyl. That's good practice. Absolutely. So you don't wash about two times your area that you need for peeling back from the peeler. You don't want any of the contaminated area accidentally come across into this this clean area to wash it with water. Make sure you don't see anything from there. Then you clean it with ice, then you peel it and then you clean it again. Well, that's. Okay. What about if a pipeline has been buried for a long time? Let's say 20, 25 years? Would you recommend electric fusion in that type of setting where there might be some soil conditions that have kind of fluctuated over the years and pipe might not be in the best shape possible? So I would say that it's highly dependent in most situations. You have to look at what what's been there, what might what contaminants may have already been in the soils, things of that nature. I would I personally would probably move towards above fusion in that in that particular scenario because there are some risks that we can't control, which is soil contamination that is outside of outside of pipe installers control. So if you're an industrial plant in particular, I don't know if I would use electric fusion to do a repair of something that's 20 or 30 years old. Right. But also assess the condition of the pipe, make sure that you don't have heavy gouging when you do peel it. You can get down into these layers that are that are of fresh virgin polyethylene. If you do choose if you do choose that these luxuries are. A common area that I see an issue with to me is where there are some sort of solvent is on the either the equipment or the pipe prior to peeling it. So if you introduce maybe WD 40 or so into that pillar area to maybe loosen up a spring or something like that, that's going to get into that fusion zone unless you really take the time to clean that out with isopropyl alcohol. Absolutely agree with you. You guys have to be you have to be cognizant of what's what's in there. You don't want he's cutting fluid on it. You don't want to have that. You also want to keep your your peeler blades very, very clean as well. Because if your if you peel an area that does have some contamination, there's chances that you can actually, with the peeler blade induce other contamination into your into your your effusions don't really what this comes down to is you want to make sure you have a clean environment, you want to use isopropyl alcohol and you would keep contaminants away from the season's out and keep it as protected as possible while being clean. Aaron Crocker is asking a good question when it comes to cleaning the pipe, is there major concerns with towel shedding lint? I might say this the ASTM of 2620 applies right? You have a dry lint free non synthetic cloth such as cotton boom. That's it for the ASTM procedure. So as long as you're using something that is is not shedding lint per the ASTM, I would assume that follows the same protocol. Absolutely. Follow the same exact protocol there. Gary, if you're watching, I'm sure you'd be proud. Thanks, man. So, Tim, we stress this, but cleanliness is of the utmost importance. So really, really important to make sure that no matter what you're doing, keep in mind that there is there's always something that could be introduced into that fusion zone. Dirt, debris, dust, oil contamination. Peeling is another major area that we we run into. Timmy, I know that you recommend that you're using a mechanical pillow. Absolutely. Not necessarily a paint scraper or hand scraper once you talk. A little bit about. Yeah. So always I always recommend a a rotary style peeler because it it it peels accurate depth and same depth on it consists with a high level of consistency. It allows for tightest fit between the pipe and the joint or the pipe in the coupling. But really what it comes down to is that you don't have any type of gouging or any excessive gouging that occurs by using a paint scraper or something of that sort. If you look at the picture on the right hand side, you can see that they may they followed some of the procedure where they made scratch marks. But to deal with describe marks is you always have to remove them. And in this case, on the right hand side, they didn't remove their scribe marks. They didn't feel effectively. You look on the left hand side, it's very consistent peeling. They've gotten they've gotten fairly deep. You can see on the side of the pipe is a little bit different there. A big, big, big win on the last real big. Bopper, right? Yeah, that looks like something maybe I would do on the right there on the left, though, to me it's also important to note that these couplings are injection molded and designed for a very tight tolerance, right? If we're sticking a piece of pipe that hasn't been peeled appropriately. Yeah. I mean you guys would always take that. Mm. And do a seven. To ten balance. Right. So what's that going to do ultimately if you're maybe over peeling or under peeling for that for the success of a cup. So if you under peel you have to tie to the gap. That means that what can happen is it's a dam doesn't form adequately and you get melt out and same thing happens if you peel too much, right? If you feel too much, you can also get excessive melt out. And then with that excessive melt out, you can't you don't create the dam. You don't you don't end up with the right amount of time pressure, temperature triangle that we need for all season to occur. Mike's asking if there is a video. Mike We don't have a video of peeling. Tell me, why don't you walk us through We're going to talk about tooling a little bit later on. But this is essentially a mechanical device that goes around the pipe and we're removing a very, very thin layer of HDPE to get that down to raw virgin material. There are a number of different devices out there. You want to talk about some of the different styles of peelers? Yeah, there's the Steelers that are fixed to the ID. Some had them missing the the style name but but yeah, it's a it's a circumstantial peeler but it's based upon the ID center. Very well. There's o.d there's this other aspect is a peeler that rides on the body of the the pipe and that those are very useful because they, they don't, you don't get as many high, low spots and they, they, they follow the ability of the pipe a little bit more say than the, the ones that have the ID and roll that that you're using. Correct. And again all of this is recommended and some resources that we'll talk about at the very end. And we're going to move on now to the next stage here of really making sure that everything is lined up correctly. This is a lineman. I think this is a huge, huge area. A number one. Yeah, it really is. But we see some major issues and we could go on and on about this. But why does electrocution fittings need to be so precise in terms of their alignment? So as when you heat polyethylene up, we're building a dam, we're building pressure with the heat. As we do that polyethylene, it becomes discus and it actually it will move. If you don't lock everything down with a clamp, your coupling will move like what happened on the right hand side. It can shift and it can shift out. And what happens is that you end up with a a joint that that doesn't pass pressure test. What you're saying there is maybe that one side on the right side, if it's not centered correctly, then the center pipe might only be attached to the hot zone and one cold zone and it might not have enough of a grip on to under that other area. Absolutely. What happens if there's maybe like deflection involved? So I see a lot of times coming out from a drill, right? You're coming out into the end of the ditch and from from an angle, you have to kind of pivot that pipe down and deflect it down a little bit. What happens if there's an unnecessary load and strain on that coupling? So as polyethylene heats, the coupling can do funny things, right? You can you will induce additional stress and create some potential bad joint like what could be on the right hand side. The recommendation is with a proper alignment clamp. Then you take the load off of the coupling because the coupling isn't designed to have that load during fusion. The coupling is designed to have the load post fusion when it's in at full strength, right when it when you're heating. This polyester, of course, loses its strength and you use that clamp there to make to ensure that you're properly aligned and things are parallel as possible. Sure. And that's going to be for the entirety of even the cooling cycle. Absolutely. All the way to the cooling. Right. So if you've got a 45 minute long cooling cycle. Leave it there. Have to have that alignment clamp. What's another thing that alignment clamps doing? It's also re rounding. So talk about different alignment in terms of the ability of the pipe and how that plays out. Absolutely. So when are you in the center? D Hours, you get a little bit higher, you get higher energy hours and larger pipes. You end up with more more of that overload. He has to be dealt with and we use alignment clients. But as you get into larger diameter electric use and say larger than 12 inch, we move into specific clamps that also re round the pipe to ensure that we are as circular as possible. Right in that. And because otherwise you end up with bigger gaps in different portions of your coupling and then that creates some different, some different geometries that handle stress differently. For me, half of the job and again I say electric fusion electrocution gets a bad rap. A lot of times it really for me comes down to more of it. It's an art form to me. It's not necessarily as as simple or as easy as taking two pipe and putting them into a machine, having the hydraulic process, you kind of have to know a little bit about a lot of different areas of how to prep that pipe and how to get it in the best chance for success. So with our Buk fusion units, they automatically re round right there, automatically holding the proper alignment. We are telling we are we are putting the heater in at a particular pressure. We're setting all of these other parameters, but we're still doing the exact same thing. We are cleaning, we are appealing, facing and we're aligning. And what was electrocution is that it is not as simple as installing a coupling on a on a PVC pipe. Right. And I think that's and I think that's the misnomer. And where it actually where it gets its bad name is they think you can put a little glue and stab it. Together and. That's not going to go right. Tim is asking our alignment clamps needed for all pipe sizes. Would you recommend an alignment clamp for an inch and a quarter inch and a half coupling all the way up to 63? I do. I do. Because unless you can unless you can 100% ensure that you that that couple of your pipes will not move during fusion I would always using the line. With the other thing here on the right is those pipes are cut at a dead straight table right there. If there is maybe some jagged edges, I typically recommend maybe Beverley's out a little bit of that pipe so that you're not going to rip out any of the copper wires or cause any damage internally. I have to make sure that you're cutting it square in terms of alignment, are you looking for things to be dead on within about an eighth of an inch, essentially, yeah. Center there. We need larger sizes. You can get a little bit more than two eight, but most of the size is through 12 and you're going to want to be about an eight to manage alignment. You can actually, but some of the faces up in advance kind of check, see how parallel those faces are. You don't want anything more than I mean, it's less than one degree, a misalignment on the faces. You want it to be a square as possible. Sure. We've got tools for that. We do it. We'll cover that here in a little bit. Jeff's asking about that gap. I know another common question that I get is there are stoppers of the inside of that coupling. Some people panic when they see the stopper. What happens if I need to get it, get it on the other side and or on fully? What do you do then? Knock it out. Is knock it out right. Easy. You hit it with a hammer on the back. Sure. You'll get it through? Sure. But Jeff, just to answer your question, you know, the gap between the pipe ends is going to vary a little bit by size, by ultimate o.D. But the goal is to get it as close as possible there and hold it in that position. We often recommend marking things with a paint pen. You know, you're measuring half the distance of the coupler, measuring that on the pipe, putting that on and really knowing exactly where you are. On the alignment. You can see where it's been marked on the right and left side, the touchpoint. And that really here shows our ability to it shows that it has not moved with which it's clamping. And you'll be able to tell that even after the joints complete if you come back and that thing is fully covered up. You've got a problem, got a. Problem, got got. Something around something wrong. Right. To figure that out. Yeah. That was typically Gary that was installing that. So okay, tell me we talk. I think you and I are both really passionate about tooling. Yeah. For electric fusion. Think we were talking yesterday basically you said if you have the right tooling you can basically get the job done. Absolutely. I mean, it really just comes down to the tooling. Are you still believe. That 100%. So it's same thing with fusion, right? You don't want to get out there and use an old cast iron pan, heat it up with a with a with a flame too. But to use pipe. So we have to look at electric fuse in the same way we look about fusion. We have these intricate fusion units that we use and above fusion we have some we have tooling that we need, that we have the appropriate tooling that needs to be used for electric fusion. They're no different. Have to write, no different. Now, some of them are specialty. Absolutely. Some of them, you know, everyone's got in their garage. So let's maybe go through some of these. The first step is the process or the fusion processor. A lot of misunderstanding about electric fusion processors. But there's a couple that we like here, and you want to talk about that. Absolutely. So the one on the right is a processor uses general electricity from a wall or a generator generator. We've got some parameters on generators that we'll discuss the the processor on the left is a lithium ion battery pack processor. Probably a vessel in the market is really cool. I'm using a couple of times. A few times and it does like 200 in a couple of it's yeah, it's out of reach and it can be recharged in a car. Yeah. The one on the right. When we talk about generators you have particular wattage that you need. What we really talk about generators is clean power up. Go ahead. Yeah. So I was going to say there's a couple of things that we need to pay attention for when it comes to the processor. Let's maybe start with which processors can produce which brands of couplings. So all processors infuse any brand. We're using a European standard to, to develop and to read a barcode or to to input. And from there, it's it doesn't matter if it's a super cell or a vortex or IGF or anyone else's processors, they all work the same and they work together, right? Other than with what's that the leads. That the leads I was going to get into somewhere. So we've got a couple of now the brands do vary on the lead size, so there's 4.0 millimeter pans and there's 4.7 millimeter pens. What are the different styles of chips? I call them chips. I'm not sure if that's what anybody else calls them that each processor is going to have to have. So each one, it depends upon the exact process or how you change the leads out of chips. But from there, some of them have multi size, some of them have independent where you have a four millimeter pin or that takes a four millimeter pin or takes a 4.7. But you have to change leads out there. There's many different ways skin that cat. But in the end, we just need to know what you need and we can provide that. Sure. And then let's maybe take this opportunity to talk a little bit about power. Yep. Oftentimes we got I'll just plug it into whatever little generator I have out there or I'll plug it into a welding generator, which is different. We need, you know, because we're putting continuous continuous power in these couplings, has to be reliable, has to be a certain draw if I'm not smart enough to talk about this, but you are what are the power requirements that we need? Usually we say over 6500 watts. So it just it depends upon what coupling that you're fuzing and what process of that you're doing. So some couplings, larger couplings, take more power. Smaller couplings with their processes can take less power, but from there, let's say an eight inch coupling, let's say 6500 watt generator, very clean power. It's going to be it's not going to be it's going to be really good. Our our graph of power, where it's giving you the appropriate amount of power in the power band and it doesn't ever fall below a certain percentage. Sure, sure. It's got to be continuous. Continuous. Amperage. I mean, again, we could probably plug in a two inch coupling in the wall here, not a problem. But if we're going to do a 24 inch coupling, might have a. Problem, might be looking at 240 volt. Exactly. So, again, please, if you're going to be doing electric fusion on a daily basis, you know, there's there's going to be a difference between what a gas utility needs in terms of their power draw than somebody that's doing 136 inch coupling every couple of months. Absolutely, totally different ballgame. So one of the ideas is we've had better the battery pack processors out there. This super cell gets into this lithium ion technology and the lithium ion technology is so good it can go out and do an eight inch right now or even a 12 inch from that. And within that, you don't need additional power. Right? It is its own power. Right. And that's that's the great thing about the super cell. All day power there. All day power for each. Or in some instances there tell us even we really Yeah. That's pretty that's pretty remarkable my iPhone so. Absolutely. So okay we're going to keep going a little bit with the the power requirements. Let's talk maybe a general discussion about barcodes on each electrocuted fitting. There's going to be a barcode likely have the brand likely have the standard it was manufactured to it will likely have the the draw or the power required or requirements the voltage requirements, the seconds it's going to burn, how many seconds, what the cooling time is. Now there's there are these things called the scanners are the ones on some of these tell us what they're doing there. Yeah they're the reading the reading a standard barcode. It's an ISO standard from the label, but all manufacturers meet the barcode from the same from the same standard. So these barcodes are reading how many voltage that the processor should put in or how many amps. And then also reading the amount, the appropriate amount of time to to eat. So and it's all the standard. It's something that that's been done for 30 years and it doesn't vary by manufacturer. Sure. So let's pretend I am out there using on a 16 inch copper and all of a sudden my generator runs out of gas halfway through the coupling fusion time. Yep. What are you doing there? I am seizing that. I'm working it out and start over and again. That's really when in doubt. Cut it out. Same thing with any type of fusion. Exactly. There's no point if you've got any doubt having to worry about that, passing the pressure test or sleeping at night, knowing that that could be out there. I really like this list here. The individual that was putting this together looked at me like I was crazy. Like, what are we going to use a drywall square for an electric fusion coupler? But really, all of these come into play. We like the idea of having if you're doing a ton of electric fusion's, a toolbox dedicated for having, you know, at minimum many of these items in there. But we have to go through a couple and explain what they do. Absolutely. So you start with a drywall squared. Yeah. So what I'm using a drywall square for is just to make sure that if I have a large diameter or medium diameter pipe, I'm squaring those pipe arms as best possible. I've got a pretty good eye. But if I'm going around that pipe with a T square and I'm seeing gaps in there, that's going to basically lead me to have some sort of gap in between that coupling. But the other one I really like to a gauge. Yes. Because Will pointed out in the very beginning, you we cannot have we can't have excessive peeling. And when you have a feeler gauge, you have the ability to check, hey, am I beginning to get into the excessive peeling range or have I even not even peeled enough? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've got some blocking and straps in there. What what I typically use those for Timmy is trying to take the strain off the coupling, so I'll probably support the pipe ends rather than the coupling itself. Maybe a little bit of both, but really want to make sure that we've got you know, we've got enough support during that entire cooling process as that becomes molten material. It's really going to be pretty malleable and flexible in there. It doesn't take much to move it. No, not at all. And we've got, of course, our process there. Why would you use pie tape to me? So we're checking our o.D. Yeah, it's that simple. It's really. It's really simple. Yeah. When you're getting into smaller diameter sizes, you don't want to use a three quarter inch coupling on a half inch pipe. Yeah, I mean, people try to do crazy things, right? And that's just one of the ways to make sure that we're doing things right. And again, I mean, I've seen it before. To me where a coupling will be manufactured at a particular tolerance, the pipe will be manufactured at a particular tolerance. Maybe one's on the high side and the other is on the low end and it's a cold day and that pipe is just completely drawn down right. It doesn't mean he's got. What would you do if there's a big gap like that? And I would especially in cold I probably use that infrared here you have over there. I try to keep everything up a little bit. You'll get a little bit of expansion within the polyethylene. Yeah, that may help close some of that gap. Some maybe thermal blankets around that to warm that pipe up. That's it. Have you ever used like a bottle, Jack inside pipes before? We we have sometimes the pipe can be very low out around and you have to find a way sometimes in a mechanical means to get the pipe more round. We've used it on some pretty large diameter lately, but yes, we do. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that's not on this. And then of course, obviously the the peeler, the processor, all that we spoke about, also maybe a chainsaw, right? Yep. I mean, that's part of any good pipe. Crude, non-oil change store, water, lubricant and just making sure that you're able to really cut that that pipe without any issues as far as possible. So, again, this is a good list. We've actually got this list typed up in a nice little format. I bet if you reach out to the team over at insights at ESCO dash pipe dot com, they'll be able to get you a list of what's in this toolbox so that you can arm your pipe group with our pipe crew with the most up to date accurate information possible. So so we jumped ahead a little bit on on this, but is there anything else that we missed on the power requirements? Tell me. I think we covered for the most part it pretty well. Always check with the processor, manufacturer or wherever you're getting your processor from on what the requirements are. There's different sized processors that can lead to different types of power that's required. So I always ask just to make sure that you have enough. One question that I get a lot is traceability, not only when it comes to sourcing the materials and also really to how the fusion was done is are there any ways that we can trace these couple of, Yeah, you want to maybe talk a little bit about selling and validate everything. So first what we end up with is every so we have two barcodes on every setting, right? Generally you have, you got your, your electric fusion barcode which tells you your processor time and things of that nature. You also have a traceability code and that links back to say what light it may be, what what it is general requirements of the of the the. Thing itself setting. Itself and then what when the processors you get into they they do a data log of how much power they put in, how long it was put in, if it were, if the process was interrupted, if it did what it's supposed to do. And within that it's a log to USB stick, you plug it in. Generally it's an Excel file. So from there you can say, Hey, joint, one, two, three, four. I did an X, Y, z location, get back to the I'll get back to the shop, get back to my computer. Oh, look, this thing cut. Out for 15 minutes in or what? Exactly right. And no one realize it on site. That's what you can go back and you can find out where it is. And read that. And I know also, especially in the gas world, there's a little bit more emphasis on traceability of the fittings as well and the materials you want to maybe touch on that at all. Yeah. So in the gas world, it's, you know, clearly natural gas is is a very risk averse market, right? Because it's dangerous to a certain extent. So what they have to do is everything is completely coated in log. So sometimes they're using the GIS type system to log. Exactly where each coupling is with each fusion. So then they can go back and record that at a later point. Or if there is an issue, they can say who did it, how it was done, when it was done, and then pull all that out of it. I again, this this process has come such a long way and that's why I really I hate when we hear about these these stories about electric fusion couplings not going well. That you. Wouldn't hire me to go out and weld a steel fitting. And that's where it's just it's I have no skill set, I have no tool. I have no knowledge base of what's required. This is a very reliable process when done correctly. So when when you when you look at the common failures and you can remove those three common those common failures becomes very, very repeatable and very, very high level success. The reason why natural gas use is so much. That I always find that to be ironic is the application that needs the most security and reliability uses electric fusion. Coupling. But they also believe in the highest level of training for all of our operators. Bupkis. And that's it. So let's take a deep dive on this subject here. Tell me when should we use electric fusion? When should we not use electric fusion? Is there maybe let's start with service types. Is there a particular gas water slurry leachate? Is there a is there any type of service fluid that's being transported through there that we should not use electric heating on? No. Right. So we've used it all those applications. We've also used it on safety related to the lines. And nuclear power plants use it all sorts of different areas. It can be used anywhere so long as you follow the right process. Right now, I tend to think that it's a little bit easier to install electric fusion couplings during new construction. Not saying that you can't do it for repairs or for, you know, adding on to an existing system. But with new construction, I think that might give you the best chance for success. I agree. So there's the variability that we were discussing in the very beginning comes into play when you don't have a new construction, we don't know what were the pipes then, we don't know what's happened with that. It could be 30, 40 years old. We don't know. It could have been installed two weeks ago. Right. So those are some some questions that we have to ask in the variability side so then we can determine on what it is. But new construction across the board, no issues. I think is really going to give you your best chance. Pipe might not be as beat up. That's right. You know, it will have the most recent resonance when we guarantee it's got, you know, all the resistance to the things that, you know. 3710. Exactly. So exactly. So I really do think new construction is going to give you the best chance for success. I ideal really for a 12 inch or smaller. I still think it's it's not because the process doesn't work on larger than 12 inch. It's just that it takes so much more education knowledge time training on that size range so you feel really comfortable 12 inch and smaller. On the larger sizes you get into larger lot significantly longer, larger surface areas that you have to craft. You're getting into couplings and fittings in which they become heavier and you're using lifting equipment to move them. And some things get heavy. I mean, you're looking at if you're looking at for I don't want to pick a 48 inch electrocuting coupling by itself. I want my back, whatever it might be. Right. So 12 inch generally, you can you can pick those couplings up and you can maneuver them and do the things that you need to. So it's not just it's not just because of a size thing. It's there's other additional factors that need to be considered when you're doing things larger than 12 inch. 100%. So conditions might play another role here. For instance, again, let's take a drilling conversation. You've got a string of a thousand feet, you've got a river. You're going to go on to the river, drill up into it. You have to make that connection somewhere. That's right. Is that a good idea for electrocution there, is it not? Is based on, you know, how clean the environment or the area is. It's it's somewhat it's how clean the environment is. It's how far did you go past your drill to get to better pay better pipe. It's some of it's just. What's the angle. Angles it's how much scraping and other other things that have happened during the drilling. Right. Right. And you just got to be you have to be real careful. Make sure it's the right spot for what you need, because we can't have 10% gouge using coupling. Right. But it's above freezing. We can't. You can't. The other interesting thing there to me is maybe there's not enough room. I mean, we always talk about electrocution being the answer in somewhat smaller spaces. Sometimes that can be a disadvantage to having a maneuver really more rigid because they're not as long fittings into a system like this. We want to talk a little bit. Yeah, you may in certain instances, you may have to dig back a little bit further, right, Because you need to within this, you have to make sure that we are clamps in the lined square. And so whatever that is is how far back you need to continue to excavate is what you need to do to be able to get square. So it depends upon the angles in which things are mating. Will pointed this out yesterday or a few days ago when we were discussing it. And in the end, if you have a small insertion pit and you're coming in at a steep angle, connecting with something that is more parallel to the ground fusion may not be. The best bet. Maybe put a MJ sleeve on it. That's it. So again, all of these I hate to keep coming back to this, but it really does come back to the point of there really might not be necessarily a right answer for every situation. So let's talk about some areas where we would and of course, proper tooling being available. I mean, that's a that's a no brainer. If you don't have a ground plant, you're not using electrocution. Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Right. So or, you know, having at the bare minimum, the appropriate peeler That's right. That is a bare minimum there. So Ethan's so good at electrocution. You can peel pipe with his eyes. I mean, he just looks at the pipe and it feels. Here we go. So we've got when not to use electric fusion is, as we just said, if isolation areas are not good, if there's a bunch of water up in the area, I mean, are you are you jumping down into a bridge with a bunch of water? And I'm not putting. Electricity and water out. Right. We're going to do it right. So, you know. Yes. So you have to keep it clean. You got to keep it dry in those situations when you can. There's other options. Right? But fusion may not be your option either. It could be mechanical fittings. So what we were really trying to say is there is a right to make sure it's the right type for your application. Yeah. And it's not a one size fits all answer, but Fusion electric using mechanical fittings. And I think it's really important that when you don't know, that's okay, raise your hand. I saw this go to me and I are always available Ethan's always available. JB You might be on a mountain somewhere, but he's mostly available. And we could all talk to you a little bit about the different ways that we can navigate that might be a combination of things that might be one way is is a clear no brainer. What happens. You know, I've seen maybe some old pipe in, say, maybe like a really bad soil with a lot of hydrocarbons in it. Are you using electrocution? We're not. Yeah, we're not. I mean, in it and it happens. The recommendation is just not to use that. Let's let's try something else. It could be mechanical fittings. Yeah. 100%. Buzzes and may not work as well in those situations as well. So one of my big things is the what if scenario. Let's talk about these one shot difference. So if I've only got one shot to make this weld and if I can't get a good well done there, we're screwed. I'm personally probably not going to remain recommended. Electrocution over a certain size range. Yep. Just because we really have to have 100% confidence in that joint. Because if you have to cut that joint out and then all of a sudden you're up against the wall and there's no more pipe. There's no yeah, there's nothing you can do at that point. You're toast. It becomes such a problem. And so with it, you know, when in doubt, cut it out. But when you cut an electric fuse and coupling out, it's at least one pipe diameter wide. Right? And you now have a gap, you now can't about to use it, you become significantly more difficult, have a repair. Yeah. So you have to think about this prior to doing those one shot. The best case is you cut it out. Now you got to put two in there. That's right. That's your best case there. So your best case. And last but certainly not least, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is large diameter coverings. We have had a lot of experience at ISCO with couplings larger than 24 inch. Yep. Some. I've personally seen installations with dozens and dozens and dozens of above 24 inch couplings. They were able to take all the time they needed in the world. They're getting one or two done per day and they all pass. I've also seen the installations that were the exact opposite of that grid. What's your thoughts on large diameter? You want to give us maybe your opinion on on. Maximum of large diameter is when you have the proper tooling, when you have the properly trained individuals that know what they're looking for. I've been trained by the manufacturers. It may be okay. The situation really just comes down to ensuring that you're giving the adequate amount of time. You're getting to training, adequate amount of time to not rushing the process and understanding the to win, to halt the process. Recently, we've done some electrocution on two meter pipe with 30 inch outlets. Very successful. Yeah. Which is it was a new deal for who to thought exactly, but it was successful. Right. And so so in this win you can control it from the very beginning. It makes it a lot easier. It was all new, new installation as well. So that's. It. That's a lot more confident in that than it would have been if it would have been solved. 20. We had a bunch of tooling out there to have all of the tools before moving on. Let's go ahead and ask the audience. I'd love to see the answer to this question. How likely are you to use electric fusion on your next project now that you're a little bit more familiar with it? Let's see here. Tell me. We've got about 100 people that have responded and boy, it's it's very likely and I'll consider it with the kind of even share of it around 40%. Not likely is actually only around 10%. So not too bad. Maybe we change the mindset of those. Not likely. Please reach out. Please reach out. Yeah, we. Do some demos and we can we can demystify the process. Again, about 200 people responding here and most of them saying they'll consider it. And I think that's that's great. That's a really good idea. That's a perfect answer because it it is. Let's talk about that fusion. What we want to do is make sure that your job is set up for success. Let's go ahead and talk. Let's wrap this thing up with some resources. To me, we we like 1055, but I think we like maybe one and maybe two, maybe even more so. So 1055 is more of a coupling standard. It's more about the process of fusion and how you do the fusion. It's it's the coupling, it's the tapping, the it's whatever it may be, one may be to really give you detailed instructions on installation. Highly recommended. We were a portion of we were we helped me with the recommendations on on both of those. And one of the other things you have here are specific gas utility approved guidelines. So those are really big in the utility world. They have their own defined procedure. And so I will always tell people to use the procedure that they're supposed to use based on the utility that they work for or they're doing work for. And of course, we've got ESCO training. We have the best people in the world doing what we do. Yeah, and I will say I love the maybe documents. For those that aren't aware, the Municipal Advisory Board is a group of expert users, not just designers, engineers. These are men. Volunteers. Volunteers, men and women that have been on mostly the municipal utility side of things from a leadership perspective and seen and heard their utility. We've got our good friend Holly Linke at Colorado Springs was on there for a while. Al Ambler was there for a while. Good friend. We've got City Springfield, Missouri on there. I believe so a lot of different individuals on there sharing their thoughts. They all came together, pulled all the manufacturers and came up with these two documents. And maybe one is for 12 inch and smaller. Maybe two is is 12 inch 14 inch and above. So again, please go on to the website, tell Mr. David Fink that ESCO Sentia and and you'll probably get a free download, something like that. So let's go ahead and maybe before we answer a couple of quick questions, stick with us, everybody, because we've got some really good questions coming up. Me Tell us who ESCO is. Yeah, we are a national solutions provider for polyethylene. We specialize in fusion equipment. So we rent and we sell, use and sell new equipment. We make standard and custom HDPE fittings. We have a very large technical and estimating staff that help people figure out what they need and how they need to use it. And then we are the best at education training. It's easy to. Be in sales one of these days. Ten tries. So let's ask let's go with some questions here. Also, I always forget this part. Please connect with us on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. I'm sure we've got a little tic ticktock on there one of these days. I'm sure it'll be it'll be out there. So, Tim, let's go ahead and ask some questions here. I keep forgetting the scene is please, if you need to use, please scan this QR code or go to Ensco dash pipe dot com slash CGU, fill out your information and we really appreciate your patience with this process. We get hundreds and hundreds of requests for see use weekly and we want to make sure that we're doing them correctly. And we've got a limited amount of people that can help supply them. So we appreciate your patience. Get that in there and we will get that out to you as soon as possible. Finally, there we go. Questions. So tell me, Aaron is asking what makes our air fittings better than the competition? Aaron We don't make necessarily electric fusion fittings. We want to talk a little bit about the difference in brands. So what we really do here is we we as well said we don't manufacture any of these and couplings. We understand the principles behind it. We we work with the vendors. We understand where the strengths and weaknesses are of different of different vendors. And we we really will play that up, right? We we know which what couplings to use and where to use them. Reuben is asking, how do you feel about a laner to even up rough score cuts with the Carpenter square to ensure straight ends? I personally love the idea of using an electric planer. I think it's the only way to really face that inner interfacial area. If you're just one guy and a and a and a toolbox. Yeah. Yeah, it works good. Clearly, you got to you've got to be safe doing forming those actions. The players when used right with the square. That's a really good way to make a square cut. If I see a planner on site, I get pretty excited. They know. They know what they're doing. Tony is asking, how can our technicians get trained? Do you send someone out to a site? You want to talk about our training process? Well, so email us. Notify us that you need training. We've got seasoned techs. We've got other people that can come out and train. We can certify people as well. Just we've got full best bet. Best thing to say is we are we're full service training company. So we can, we can train anyone in any you have a fusion, any and any day. And Tony let us. Know. Tony. What we'll also do is take a look at your plans and specifications and maybe make some recommendations. There might be ways to save you time, money, Labor offer a new solution for us. That's a conversation we're pretty passionate about, making sure that the best fit for your project is getting in there. One is asking where we sometimes bevel the ends of pipe to install a coupling so you remove the belt should the bevel be removed if possible. So it really depends on how far back to Bevel is. If it's a slight bevel, you know, it's just enough to. It's a handy burr, handy bearing device, that's one thing. But if it's if it's bevel, anything more than that quarter inch, maybe, maybe a quarter inch or large size as an eight individual small, I would go ahead and cut that out. When you're I would I would stop. 100%. And really, I mean, if that bevel is in the cold zone far enough to one side where it's not going to come in contact with any molten plastic, I think you're in the clear. But as Timmy said, really just make sure that should be a very minor bevel, Not not very big at all. Just enough to get. Started, just to make sure you're not poking some of those wires out as you're going in. Both Casey and Easton are asking some similar questions here. All right. But if you bought fusion or electric fusion, which one's better? I mean. It's situationally dependent. Completely. So Easton is asking maybe for a little bit more information on the space requirements and some advantages to one. So space requirements, it it depends on your alignment. And so when you have properly aligned in, say, you're doing a two inch and your properly aligned coming in, the clamping systems are very small. You can do it in say, a 12 inch by 12 inch box. If you are directional drilling and you're coming in at different angles, that's where it becomes a little bit more, more intricate electric fusion and black fusion and small diameters with a14 unit or a two inch coupling. It takes about the same space, but just comes into it. How how do you how do you get the everything properly aligned, everyone to suit everyone knows about fusion alignment is absolutely key. Was electric fusion. People seem to forget about that sometimes. And Kaiser, I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong. What are the possible quality testings for fusion teaming? So with with within this there's there's microwave there's other things that you can do for nondestructive evaluation. One of the options always is is training people properly, cutting it out and doing a bend test on the joint. Same thing that you would do with a bus. You can go in as well or very similar appeal test. So pressure testing. As for anything over here, it's talking about process. Things always recommended. Last question and then we're going to wrap this thing up. Joe is asking, is gas pipe MVP okay to be Electric fuse two? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So generally we learn something new every day. Joe, I didn't I didn't know the answer to that question. Usually the electric season couplings are going to be made out 47 times and they're being used to they can be used by, among other things, me. Great job today, man. Thank you. Good to hear. Yeah, you too. It's actually one fun fact I saved today and Timmy made fun of me on the way in, so I was trying to look presentable for you all, and it didn't go to plan anyways. That's nice. Enough of that. Thank you so much for joining everybody. So many last questions or comments on electric fusion. Now. It's it's it's an easy process so long as you follow the process. That's very, very well said. Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope you come back and visit us soon on behalf of everybody here at Tesco. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope all your projects are off to a good start during this busy construction season opener here. And please reach out to insights at Isco dash pipe dot com. If you have any specific questions. I'd also encourage you to visit our website at ESCO dash pipe dot com to find more resources and to connect with your local sales team. So that's it. That's all we have folks. We'll see you next time on ESCO Insights. In the meantime, be safe out there and as always, happy Fuzing. Take care.