Note From The Editor
Greetings,

As the pressure to increase domestic oil production builds, cities like Hobbs, New Mexico, are booming. Located on the oil fields of west Texas and eastern New Mexico, Hobbs is facing serious population growth. The population growth, in turn, creates the need to provide utilities to new residential developments in the city.

So much of the town’s population is at work in the oilfields that the former 24-hour Wal-Mart closes at 10 p.m., due to the lack of workers for a night shift. While the pressure to produce oil has some things in Hobbs out of whack, one thing not so wacky is the city relying on high-density polyethylene pipe (HDPE).

In early October, workers from RPM Construction, LLC, worked on a 120-foot stretch of 12-inch HDPE that was to be threaded through a tunnel created by a directional drilling machine. The bore is underneath a 100-foot stretch of Dal Paso Street, one of the municipality’s main thoroughfares. The line will supply water to a new subdivision full of duplexes built for the influx of oilfield workers.

This 120-foot stretch of pipe is a smaller piece of a much larger project. In March 2008, the City of Hobbs approved a $2.8 million bid by RPM Construction to install 15,914 feet of 10- to 20-inch waterlines, 10,889 feet of 8-inch sewer lines, 34 manholes, 51 water service connections and 51 sewer service connections. The contract between the city and RPM has a $5,000-per-day bonus to be rewarded should work finish before scheduled. Likewise, a $5,000-per-day penalty could be assessed for each day over the proposed deadline.

One interesting part of the bidding process was that a contractor could choose the materials. RPM and the City of Hobbs agreed that HDPE would be advantageous for the project.

“Allowing alternative pipe materials provides competition between suppliers of various pipe material and contractors,” explains Todd Randall, city engineer for the City of Hobbs. “Acceptable materials were established in the specifications. HDPE becomes more competitive when you have large areas of improvements that would have to be replaced with open-trench construction. In our project, the utilities are in the roadway of a major arterial, so the roadway and pavement thickness is substantial.”

Robert Mendoza, owner of RPM, knew that choosing HDPE would pay for itself in the long run.

“Polyethylene is a little more expensive up front, but not tearing stuff up evens out the cost,” said Mendoza.

Mendoza and his crew were experienced with HDPE in gas applications, but recruited the expertise of McElroy distributor Milford Pipe and Supply to learn more about water solutions involving HDPE and McElroy equipment. The crew also observed on water jobsites in Texas before bidding the job.

Scheduled to complete in early 2009, RPM workers were already very optimistic about attaining a hefty bonus. The use of McElroy fusion equipment and HDPE has put them far ahead of the contract’s schedule.

To create the 120-foot stretch of 12-inch pipe, workers fused lengths of HDPE together using a McElroy TracStar 412, as well as a McElroy PolyHorse. With the PolyHorse, the use of a backhoe or other lifting device is unnecessary, as one operator can easily roll the pipe down the rack, onto the integrated pipe rollers and into the fusion machine. In addition to the productivity gains, other benefits of using the PolyHorse include keeping the pipe free from damage and contamination, as well as improving the safety factor for the operator.

The TracStar 412 is built tough and rugged for use on almost any jobsite, and is powerful enough to pull lengths of pipe great distances. In the case of the Hobbs jobsite, the TracStar 412 was versatile enough to maneuver into position for a fusion, to be driven onto a flatbed trailer and to be hauled to other work stations around the city.

The 120-foot length of pipe was fused and ready for use in a matter of a few hours, not days, as is common when assembling other types of pipe.

At a second site, a few hundred feet away, a directional bore occurred so that the fused pipe would have a home. By the afternoon, the pipe had been transported to the bore site and was ready to be pulled through the tunnel under Dal Paso Street.

A compacter and backhoe loader worked in tandem pushing and pulling the pipe through the prepared hole in less than 10 minutes. The 12-inch pipe would then tie into the 20-inch main with a tee.

While the little amount of time needed to perform the bore, pull, and tie-in is a great advantage to city and contractor, the biggest advantage to the city might be not digging up perfectly good asphalt and concrete roads to complete the job.

Randall noted that citizens don’t even realize when some of the HDPE work has been done, because the tie-in technique doesn’t disrupt traffic. For the municipality, this is a win-win situation, because public approval and perception remains high, while the materials used are perfect for the situation.

“I am sure that the city will be happy with the pipe and the installation,” said Cody Tippy, vice president of operations at Milford Pipe & Supply. “They will possibly be more apt to go with polyethylene again on the next project.”

While Hobbs had the foresight to put a dependable pipe material in the ground, the same can’t be said for other municipality’s infrastructures. A newly published ‘State of the Industry Report’ from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) lists “infrastructure” as the No. 2 U. S. issue facing the water industry. The survey results used in the report were from a random sampling of 12,000 AWWA members across the country.

In the report, some infrastructures were described as “aging,” “crumbling” and “failing.” Randall and the City of Hobbs know for certain that this new pipe will not be subject to those same words for the next 100 years.

“I think that it is only a matter of time and there will more and more municipalities changing to polyethylene,” predicts Tippy. “Engineers are beginning to see the advantages of polyethylene as opposed to other materials.”

Sincerely,
Tyler Henning
thenning@mcelroy.com

P.S. – Do you have an interesting job coming up that uses McElroy equipment?

Currently, we’re looking for jobsites that are using the following pieces of McElroy equipment:

• No. 824 or TracStar 630 that was purchased within the last year and is performing in-ditch fusion.
• No. 1236 that was purchased within the last year
• No. 618 that was purchased within the last two years
• No. 1648 that was purchased within the last year
• A jobsite using several pieces of McElroy small diameter fusion equipment

If you have a jobsite that fits any of the above requirements, or is unique in its approach, please e-mail me at the link above or call (918) 831-9286.