Is about the most simple and boring thing i have ever done. we were supposed to have a tech from the company we bought the pipe from come out and weld the pipe for us and teach us how, he was to arrive on tusday morning, didnt show up he called at 9 and said he might be there at 2, no show. He called at 9 the next morning said he's an hour away, called again at 1 and said he's about a half hour away traffic was awful and he got bad directions. He finally shows up at 2:30 and talks to us for a minute and leaves saying he has to go find a hotel, he will be back before 7 tomorrow morning.( although he told his boss he had 6 billable hours that day) He didnt show up on thursday so we called his boss and he taught us how to fuse the pipe over the phone and told us to tell the guy to **** off and go home if he ever shows up, he was beyond pissed. I'm not going to say what i really think of the guy but he was litterally as queer as a $3 bill. We were actually glad he never showed. we were only doing 6" HDPE so it was very simple all you do is clamp the two pisces in the machine, there is a cutting wheel that drops down between the 2 pieces that cuts each side at the same time so that they are square to eachother. You pull that up clean the shavings off the pipe, stick a heat plate between the pipes and pull them together with the machine, let it sit for 2 minutes, pull the pipe apart so you can remove the plate. Then you just bring the two pieces together untill a the two small beads of melted pipe roll over and let it cool for 10 minutes. Every joint takes about 15-20 minutes, but you only work about 2 of those the rest you sit and wait. The process is the same for larger pipe you just need to know the correct heating times/temp, what pressure push the joint together with, and the cooling time. I took a piece of pipe we welded and tried to rip it apart with our mini ex and it didnt do anything except smash the pipe.
So you got the pipe fusing figured out, did you guys figure out how to get the pipe down the bank and all the other BS involved with that job?
We just welded the 300' of pipe together with the diffuser tee on the bottom and stared feeding it over the bank with the excavator. we would just throw a strap on it, feed it over untill i couldnt reach any further then move it back and do it again. We had one guy going down over the bank with a rope directing it around trees and such, and one guy at the top letting me know weather to go or stop. The pipe eventually got heaving enough, and it was steep enough that it would just slide down on its own. We got 2 of the runs headed over and down to the beach, still got one more to go.