Pipe bursting with a HDD rig..?
Installation of 160mm Drainage duct using existing pipe
This was completed for a private client who has a head office / production space near Woodford in Northamptonshire and only 10 minutes from our base making this the shortest commute to one of our projects for a long time!
They had tried several techniques to repair the existing drainage which runs under the metal workshop area where it had been both blocked and broken in several places by tree roots. We had initially thought to directional drill a new duct into place for them, but with limited knowledge of the existence or locations of any existing utilities as well as a huge degree of background signal interference caused by the metal structures and overhead powerlines; guaranteeing any accuracy, especially under the metal outbuilding, wasn't possible and the risk of hitting unknown infrastructure too high.
What we decided to try was a little unorthodox but we couldn't see why it wouldn't work...
Using the existing drain on the near side of the first building, we would cross under to the point that the pipe was broken and exposed on the other side; now out of the drain and back in open ground, we would then steer to another section of broken drain which had also been exposed around 15m further up - we would need to hit this at the exact depth and angle required in order to use this section to cross under the final outbuildings and tress. Once through, we could attach a back reamer with a little bit of additional hard facing and knife like teeth to burst the old pipe as we pull in the new one.
The result - it works, the reamer lost a few teeth thanks to a section of steel drainage pipe that was under the building (which you can see is still on the rods in the pictures!) but we managed to get the new drain in place in less than 2 hours for a fraction of the price of a new install - thanks to the small working footprint of the HDD setup we also did this while ensuring the business was unaffected by our presence ,
