HDPE Provides Answer For Gate Repair
South Florida Water Management District uses 42-inch line
to repair water-control gate
If there is a state that knows a thing or two about water, it’s Florida. The state contends with
hurricanes that dump heavy rainfalls in short amounts of time, two massive coastlines, worldfamous
beaches, the Everglades and many canals.
 With so much water as part of everyday life, naturally some manmade water management
comes into play. Recently, the South Florida Water Management District called upon Moving
Water Industries (MWI) and HD Supply to use their expertise to move the water in a subbasin
to a manageable level in order to repair an eroded flood gate. The Osceola County flood gate’s
base was originally 12 inches of cement, but the water had eroded the concrete to 8 inches.
Polyethylene pipe turned out to be the perfect solution for the repair. Four lines of 42-inch
SDR 26 pipe were fused together and connected to MWI’s pumps with flanges and bolts. Each
pump moves approximately 40,000 gallons per minute, with the hope of moving a maximum of
185,000 gallons per minute across the four pipes and pumps.
With all of Florida’s water concerns, its not uncommon to see one of their pumps on a aterinvolved
jobsite. In fact, the company’s reputation in the Southern U.S. led to a call for help
during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. All of the company’s pumps were put into the fray, often
requiring a helicopter to airlift the equipment into the work zones.
Although not quite the same scale of
job as the Katrina clean-up, the flood-gate
repair near Cypress Lake required getting
the maximum performance out of the
pumps and the pipe that would transfer
the water to the other side of the dam.
MWI’s Claudio Grecco, a technical specialist,
says that in many instances HDPE
is the best answer for moving water.
“Using steel, a weld (on 42-inch pipe)
would take two hours and that’s just for
one pass,” said Grecco. “It might take a
total of three passes by a welder to make
sure the steel pipe is leak-free. Every
jobsite we get, this poly pipe is what we
beg for.”
 Grecco also said that in the case of
the flood gate repair, bidding with HDPE
was approximately $30,000 cheaper than
using steel, and the flexibility of the pipe
would be a huge asset on the job.
HD Supply provided the pipe, a
McElroy Rolling No. 1648 and fusiontechnician Charles Scarbary to complete the
fusion process.
The jobsite called for a number of 45-
degree elbows to be fused onto the four pipes
at different distances to create four pipes
running side-by-side from above the dam to
below it. By the end of the project, the four
pipes looked like a smaller “C” hugged by a
larger “C” surrounded by an even larger “C”
and so on. The three-segment ells were fabricated
before arriving at the site by truckload.
“This machine has paid for itself many
times over,” said Scarbary. “Forty-two inch
pipe is our most popular size, so this machine
sees plenty of work.”
Scarbary worked in unison with a hydraulic
excavator and telehandler to maneuver
the pipe and subsequent ells in, out and
around the machine. Once a sizeable length
of pipe was fused together, it was pulled
into place and attached to MWI’s pumps
with a bolted flange.
While repairing a single flood gate could
be viewed as minimal by some, it is a great example of how HDPE can be used quickly to circumvent
a problem. Kevin Poole, field superintendent for HD Supply, also stated that the South
Florida Water Management District is likely to reuse the 42-inch pipe down the road – yet
another advantage of polyethylene.
Contact Information:
McElroy PR and Marketing Department
Tyler Henning, public relations specialist
Phone: (918) 831-9286
E-mail: thenning@mcelroy.com |
