The City of Richmond has commenced a 5-10 year project to replace and improve the water mains, sewers and roadways in the Burkeville area of Richmond near the Vancouver International Airport. This area has been prone to flooding so a newly expanded drainage system over and above the existing open ditches is needed to reduce the flood risk in the future.
Phase 1 and 2 have been completed and in Phase 3, along with PW Trenchless Pipe Bursting, all water mains will be replaced, trees and hedge trimmed or removed, installation of a new drainage system, and repaving of the road and installing a new gravel shoulder to roadways.
From September 6th 2022 to October 28, 2022 PW Trenchless replaced 265m of existing sanitary mains via pipe bursting and was lucky to be able to do the work at the tail end of an extremely dry period of weather for the Lower Mainland. The water table is typically extremely high during normal times in Richmond, so the dry weather was a plus for this project.
The Burkeville area of Richmond is one area of Richmond that still has ditches, and when the crew was initially looking at the project in the Spring, the ditches were full of water.
The City had installed a sign for the residents to see the scope of the project and PW Trenchless’ part of phase 3 included:
-Clearing and tree removal at entrance and exit pits locations.
-Trimming trees that may interfere with excavation and mobilization.
-Excavations of entrance and exit pits.
-The dewatering of excavations if required along with the treatment of discharge water.
-Fusing of HDPE pipe on site within approved laydown area.
-Trenchless pipe bursting of 130m of existing 200mm (8″)AC pipes with 200mm HDPE.
-Trenchless pipe bursting of 130m of existing 250mm (10″)AC pipes with 250mm HDPE.
-Restoration of excavated areas.
On September 13th of 2022, after the long dry spell mentioned above, PW Trenchless Construction did two of the 6 bursts that are part of this project. The entrance and exit pits had been dug prior to the day of the burst, and the depth was not too deep. The pits were dry enough to just need a couple of smaller pumps to handle the ground water and De-watering was not needed. A rare occurrence for Richmond.
The tugging apparatus was installed and the pulling rods were inserted through two runs of pipe. Starting at 11a.m. And arrived in the entrance pit an hour later. The rods went right through one of the existing manholes near mid point of the two runs.
The first section of HDPE pipe had been staged in a park area near the burst and the road needed to be temporarily closed to traffic. Traffic for the area is extremely light as there are not very many homes and they were able to drive the other direction to access the subdivision.
Once the pipe was staged, it already had the pulling head attached, it was connected to the pulling rods and the burst commenced at 12:24pm and was finished at 12:52p.m.
The head was removed and the new section of pipe was staged alongside the roadway and the bursting head was attached. A bit of Hydro excavation was done around the gas main for safety and the second burst started at 2:20pm and finished at 2:37p.m. The head was removed and the two sections of pipe were connected to the existing pipe at one end and grouted into the manholes where needed.
The City of Richmond has commenced a 5-10 year project to replace and improve the water mains, sewers and roadways in the Burkeville area of Richmond near the Vancouver International Airport. This area has been prone to flooding so a …
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When you join PWT, you become part of a community of people who are engaged in the most innovative practices in the Trenchless Industry. We have been instrumental in setting up a scientific method for cities to gain carbon offsets/credits from their use of trenchless construction. This system has been reviewed by the BC Government and has been approved as of December 2018. We expect to see it in common use shortly.
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