title says it all. if you were to take on a project to install 200 miles of water pipeline in a rural setting (very rural--very, very rural) how would you go about it?
How large a pipeline, how deep, do you have room for a side hoe, how much room do you have for big equipment? What kind of ground? Trees or other landscaping? Road crossings? Powerlines? How about backfill? Uniform backfill or straight common trench? Title doesn't say it all. If it did every tom **** and harry would make a fortune doing sewer and water.
sorry, good question. its not a straight line, but long runs of 3 to 8 miles at a time. kind of a network. pipe sizes would be 2" up to 8". also, frost free depth of 7.5' of cover. rolling hills with all soil types but not solid rock. some soils with rocks and some without rocks.
D6 with ripper, 20 ton excavator, trencher, rubber duck and a backhoe with 4 in 1 bucket and forks, tractor with low loader trailer. Tractor and trailer to shift the tracked equipment down roads etc that you can't touch tarmac with steel tracks. 20 tonner to strip back top soil or cut push trench for D6 if lots of room. Then throw the backfill over along with bits of trenching here and there Trencher for the obvious Rubber duck for pipework lifting and general duties, backfilling, road side work etc Bachoe for unloading pipe with forks and general duties D6 to strip top soil, rip formation just before backfill and regrade when done, plus bit of tree clearing etc.
form main line work Cat 330 or 345 950 with side dump bucket and forks cat 315 with compactor and hammer road reclaimer with half drum to grind the trench 4-5 ten wheelers depending on hauling distance services cat 305 cat 906h cleanup broce broom sidewalk paver skid steer support read screener (to screen material for backfill) generator and pumps steel plates rubber tired backhoe for miscelaneous work rubber tired excavator or gradall for grading trench after
D6R (six way)to pre-strip top soil ahead of the main hoe and to push it back after, 320-325 main hoe digging and then a second hoe (314 would do you) to compact/backfill. Having a loader around to help backfill, shuttle pipe around and haul gravel is always a good idea too.
no bedding is required. also i would lay the pipe out ahead of the dig crew several miles. so a loader might not be needed. this is not a job that i have or am bidding on. i have worked on similar project and am looking for new ideas on how to do this rural water work. a 20 ton excavator is much too small. 30 tons are much better suited. in our soils a 30 ton machine will snort and use 9 gallons per hour. the teeth sometimes will only list 50 hours. it can be really hard dry clay.
What's the water for rshackleford? I thought it might be for cattle watering stations at first, but the pipe size seems rather large for that application. Methane wells??? OCR
rural water. its dry out there on the prairie.
Well I know this is rather impractical.... but you said your lookin for new ways. This isn't the right way.... or the wrong way but its the Sureway. We did 40kms of 12" watermain back in 07 like this. Average depth was around 9.5ft. Cat D8N with a angle blade to strip topsoil. Cat 385CL to mainline Cat 330DL for sidehoe to sand, laypipe and dig services Cat 966H for bringing sand, laying out pipe and gravel Cat 973C for backfill Dynapac 15ton sheepsfoot packer John Deere 710G with hoe pack for packing around valves, and that operator builds valves, CC's and sands pipe whenthe 330 gets behind. Like I said, it's a big budget way of doin pipe.... but that pipe flew into the ground.
that sounds great. in my line or work we don't need bedding and all the pipe is laid on surface and slung in with the hoe up to ten inch although i have seen awwa c905 14" put in this way. the digging machine strips the top soil and puts it to one side of the trench and spoils to the other. a dozer pushes in the soil with no compaction required. but...if i were to have to do this as though it had a compaction requirement and bedding requirement Burnout has a pretty interesting setup. Burnout--did you dig a sloped back trench or have a box? what was your daily production?
As far as not being in the street i think i would use vermeer 1255 comander 3 980h with bucket and forks 2 345's to set pipe D8 with angle blade for backfilling 563 roller for compaction skid steer with power rake hydro seeder it will look like you were never there
would one of these be digging?
no the threncher would be going so fast as one set the pipe the other would be hooking up and setting the next piece and throwing as they set the pipe use them to throw some back fill material on before the dozer fills it in
Yeah, I've watched a few of these big water projects go into rural Alberta. They know how to do it - at least they did while the money flowed like water. Now that the flow of oil has slowed and Alberta is running a deficit for the first time in 15 years . . . who knows what's next.
Is this going in with plastic welded pipe? If you do not have much rock, I'd recommend the trencher. They outdig an excavator six ways from Sunday and you can spill the pipe in right behind it, then use an angle dozer to cover. There are also special atachments that will push cover for loaders and such. But having dozers will probably be a neccessity anyway and make sure one has a good winch.
i never thought id see the day but yes very scarry inded!
Work has slowed down out here.... but it's not that slow yet. Hmmm sloped back or trenchbox..... can I select neither? We call it a sloped trench but well like I said it was the Sureway. Sloped is all in how you look at it. The walls weren't straight down, but they weren't sloped like most people are used to seeing. The hole was dug with a 60" spoon bucket. As for production.... it was only limited by the side hoe and pipelayers. We were on average doing 7-800 meters per day because the pipe crew wasn't going fast enough. The 385 had no problems doing 12-1400 meters per day but whats the point? I was only associated on the backfill side since I was running the 973. But I can tell you that was more than fast enough for me. It didn't take long for me to start falling behind on backfill.
If you're in prarie most of the ground is fairly soft right? As in not running into a whole lot of rock. I'd say the trencher could make really good production. It wouldnt work for everything as you may run into some rock here and there that you'd need to rip out with a hoe but for the most part you could go flat out. Even if you dont use rock a loader would come in handy for shuttling buckets, trench boxes, bundles of pipe, pumps etc. Almost anyone can hop in one and move things around (one of your labour guys) and they are fairly cheap to run. If you have a hoe digging mainline the last thing you want to do is have him stop and spend 30 min unloading bundles of pipe from a truck, or spending 5 minutes walking over to grab a spare bucket etc. Main hoe should dig flat out from day start to day finish, use a support machine for just that. Support. It also would make alot of sense production wise to have the dozer strip. He should be able to get way ahead of the main hoe, so while hes waiting for the hoe to cath up he can come back and backfill. You want to make things as quick as possible for main hoe, if you dont have trench you can't lay pipe. Having to sort the topsoil one way and the clean dirt another is wasting time.
Get a Vermeer trencher to cut the trench , kick in the plastic welded PolyPipe , use a D4 with a PAT blade to run the fine graded spoils back in the hole . Give it a track roll and a backblade and go home .
i'm with you all the way there ironhorse. trust the americans to find a way to make a simple job complicated and costly