Pipe Bursting - Trenchless - Industrial

TRENCHLESS TECHNOLOGIES

pipebursting ipba_logo

Water ~ Sewer ~ Gas ~ Drain ~ Conduit ~ Other
Serving All Of New England and the Islands
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Pipe Bursting

is a method of replacing old pipe with a new pipe. The new pipe can have the same or larger inner diameter. This is accomplished by pulling a hardened steel splitting head through the old pipe. The new pipe is attached to the back of the splitting head and is pulled in as the old pipe is split and expanded. The new pipe follows the path of the old one and lies in its place.

There are (2) types of pipebursting Static and Pneumatic.
The Ted Berry Company offers both.

The newly installed pipe is usually HDPE, however recent advances in pipe materials and joints allow newly installed pipes to be PVC, Ductile Iron, Steel, and others.

Our crews are experienced and have many thousands of feet of successful installations throughout New England from 2" to 24" with both our STATIC and PNEUMATIC systems. Be certain to demand a team with proven experience - the Ted Berry Trenchless Technologies Team has it and will prove to you our customer the worth of a trained professional team.

No company in New England owns and operates as much static or pneumatic pipe bursting equipment as the Ted Berry Company Company Trenchless Technologies Team. See or "equipment list" for our current equipment list.

As an added value our crews have available to them an extensive support team from the Ted Berry Company's Municipal and Industrial Service groups. Internal pipeline cleaning, robotic CCTV pipeline inspection, and utility locating / hydroexcavation crews are available at a moments notice and are often used in the pre-planning stages of projects that are considering alternative construction methods.

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Look Familiar? This 6" CI water main is replaced with new 8" HDPE. (6" tee was excavated to install a new hydrant tee. Our Ductile Iron pipe slitters will easily burst these sections as well as repairs made of various materials. Photo is used to show the types of materials encountered during a water main burst)

*Recently Completed Projects*
Endicott College	Replacement of 500' of 5" Orangeburg gravity sewer with new 8" HDPE during school vacation
York Sewer District - York, Maine	Replace existing 12" VCP x 950' gravity sewer line on Ocean Avenue (Short Sands Beach) with new 12" HDPE SDR17.
Boston Water and Sewer (BWSC) East Boston, Massachusetts	Replace existing 15" VCP x 1200' gravity sewer line on on Frankfort and Prescott Streets with new 16" DIPS HDPE SDR17. Located near Logan Airport.
US Government	Replace existing 12" CI x 300' water main under active runway of Air National Gaurd re-fueling wing taxiway with new 12" HDPE SDR11 DIPS.
Town of Nantucket, MA	Replace existing 6"-8"-10" x 6,000lf + gravity sewer mains with new HDPE in the Historic Downtown area.
City of Bangor, Maine	Replace existing 24" VCP gravity sewer x 250lf' with new 24" HDPE SDR17 IPS through a remote cross country easement
Town of Belmont, Ma	Replace existing 6" CI x 2,000lf water main with new 8" HDPE SDR11 DIPS.
City of Gardiner, Maine	Replace existing 8" VCP gravity cross country remote sewer x 500' with new 8" HDPE. Replacement done in below zero weather December 2009. Pneumatic with Manhole Exit at 16' deep Lincoln Avenue Manhole.
Loring Maine	Replacement of existing 8" VCP and PVC gravity cross country sewer with new 8" -10" HDPE. General Contractor Soderberg Inc.
City of Augusta, Maine	Replace existing 10" VCP gravity sewer x 475' with new 12" HDPE SDR17 DIPS under MDOT roadway Rt 17.
Town of Livermore Falls, Maine	Replace existing 6" VCP gravity sewer x 300' through a remote cross country easement with new 8" HDPE SDR17 IPS. Ted Berry Co Inc was General Contractor.
Tim Horton's / Walgreen's	Replace existing 6"VCP x 90' of gravity sewer under entrance during busines hours. Norway, Maine.
Town of Jay, Maine	Replace existing 8" Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF) outfall piping with new 8" HDPE SDR17 IPS while keeping plant in full operation.
Camden, Maine	Replace existing 6" CI x 1000' water main with new 8" HDPE SDR11 DIPS.
Rockland, Maine	Replace existing 2" CI x 1200' small diameter water main with new 2" HDPE SDR 11 CTS under MDOT roadway.
Ogunquit Sewer District	Replace existing 8" CI x 800' sanitary sewer force main with new 10" HDPE SDR11 DIPS.
Ogunquit Sewer District	Replace existing 4" CI x 1800' sanitary sewer force main with new 6" HDPE SDR11 DIPS.
Pepsi Bottling Group	Replace existing 4"-6"-8" DI drain with new HDPE under production line.
Kittery Water District	Replace existing 4" steel pipe with new 4" HDPE SDR9 DIPS in blasted ledge trench.
Town of Norway, Maine	Replace existing 6" VCP x 800' cross country gravity sewer line with new 8" HDPE SDR17.
*Call for more!!*

Static Pipebursting

Ted Berry Company offers 12 ton (HG12) 30 ton (PB30) 40 ton (PG40) 50 ton (HB50) 60 ton (HB5058) 80 ton (HB80) 125 ton (HB125) 150+ ton (1250G) Static Pipebursting Equipment from our New England Location	Step #1 - Payout Rod
Step #2 - Attach tooling & New Pipe	Step #3 - Pull in new Pipe

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Static Overview

HDPE Fusion - Technicians fuse new HDPE into continuous lengths up to 700' above ground
Excavation - of receiving and insertion pits. These pit are placed in a area that reduce impact to the public and traffic patterns. Although different sizes and types of burst require different size pits most pits are approximately 6' x 12' in size.
Payout Rod - payout the rod/chain down the existing pipe. 350 feet of rod/chain can be pushed/pulled out in approximately one hour. Rod/chain can pass through sweeping bends in pipe systems.
Attach to Tooling - Attach bursting heads and/or ductile slitter to the rod/chain end. HDPE pipe is attached to an expander which is between 20 - 29% larger than the outside diameter of the pipe being installed.
Pull Back Product - During pull back, old pipe is fractured or split and pushed out into the surrounding soil. The new pipe is installed simultaneously. Pullback operation takes approximately two hours to install 350 feet of pipe, depending on soil conditions.
Final connections - New connections are made and new line put back into service. With pipebursting water mains are often pre-chlorinated and pressure tested above ground and put back on line the same day. With sanitary sewer burst new service connections are often made with Inserta-Tee connections and made active the same day.

The Ted Berry Trenchless Technologies Team has static pipebursting equipment with 30 ton (Hammerhead PB 30), 40 ton (Pipe Genie 40), 50 ton (Hammerhead HB5058), 80 ton (Hammerhead HB80), and 125 ton (Hammerhead HB125) capacities. With the ability to replace pipes from 2"-36".

Pneumatic Pipebursting

Pneumatic Bursting Overview

Much like driving a nail pneumatic pipebursting uses an air powered hammer mounted inside of the bursting head to fracture, expand, and pull the new pipe into place. Ted Berry Company Trenchless Technologies Team owns and operates Earth Tool's Hammerhead equipment. Since we own our own tools setup and mobilization can be done in a short amount of time and at a competitive cost.

Ted Berry Company's HydroGuide HG12 and HG20 winchs are ruggedly built to meet the demands of pipe bursting. The winches are designed to facilitate extraction of burst heads through manholes to reduce the need for expensive receiving pits.
Excavation costs can be reduced by utilizing manhole retrieval of the burst head. (Manhole exiting is a patented process of Earth Tool Company LLC, US PATENT: US 6,299,382 B1)
A bursting head fitted to the pneumatic tool bursts damaged pipeline and pushes the fragments into the surrounding soil. As the tool bursts the pipe, new product of the same or larger size is pulled in. A reversible hammer allows for rear exiting of the pneumatic equipment at completion of the burst.
On larger or longer bursts, lubrication can increase production and the bursting distance capability by reducing pipe friction.
New HDPE is attached to the pneumatic pipe bursting tool and is pulled into place as the tool follows and bursts the existing line.

Ted Berry Co Inc HG12 winch and air hammer for small to mid size line bursting

Ted Berry Co Inc HG20 winch and air hammer for large line bursting

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Burst Heads

INSERTION PIT HDPE
To determine the dimensions of the pits our technicians use the PPI formula for launch angles. Auto-CAD drawings are provided to our customers and engineers upon request for specific project layouts.

Small Diameter and Lateral Bursting

Our crews have installed many thousands of feet of small diameter 2"-6" gravity and forced water and sewer lines. Many homes have a small 4" pipe that is typically made from a clay or orangeburg material that easily allows roots to grow into pipe and cause costly backups and overflows. Residential and commercial backups often consist of raw sewerage flowing directly into areas where people live and work. Our crews operate 30 (Hammerhead PB30), 40(Pipe Genie PG40), and 50 (Hammerhead HB5058)ton static units as well as a 12 ton pneumatic unit with 2", 3", and 4" pneumatic moles.

Excavation is often reduced by as much as 90%!

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This photo shows our Hammerhead PB30 unit.

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PG 40

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Water Service Replacement

Waterline slitters are a profitable trenchless solution for water line service replacement. Our water service replacement system is a portable, cost-effective and efficient method of replacing ¾ " to 2” service pipes in a minimum amount of time while reducing or eliminating costly excavation and surface repair.

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Conduit or Utility Drain Replacement

Our small diameter PVC and Conduit cutters are specially designed to burst plastic pipes and replace with new pipes. Our small diameter replacement system is a portable, cost-effective and efficient method of replacing 2 " to 6” service pipes in a minimum amount of time while reducing or eliminating costly excavation and surface repair.

The newly installed pipe is usually HDPE or High Density Polyethelyne.

High density polyethylene plastic pipe (HDPE) delivers exceptional value, unwavering reliability and remarkable advantages over conventional types of piping. It’s today's right choice for water, drainage, fuel gas, conduit and plumbing & heating. Other reasons HDPE is a superior choice:

Long-term service life
Highly-resistant to corrosion, abrasion and chemicals
Strong, durable, flexible and lightweight
Longer-length pipe with leak-proof joints
Lower labor requirements for installations

There is no substitute in polyethylene pipe joining, for a correctly made fusion joint. Correctly made, polyethylene pipe joints are equally as strong as the pipe itself and have the same design life as the pipe itself. Ted Berry Technicians are trained in butt-fusion and electro-fusions methods.

Randy Happel — Apr 01, 2008
Driving into the picturesque New England village of Northport, Maine, for the first time along its narrow, winding streets is likened to entering a storybook setting. Meticulously landscaped yards surround decoratively painted cottages — blue, yellow and pink in color and clad with ornate trim work — many of which are individually named and identified by rustic, hand-painted signs.

Located on Maine’s rugged eastern coast and home to approximately 1,500 residents, Northport is a resort community comprised mostly of seasonal dwellers. The place is so remote that the majority of Maine’s 1.4 million residents have never heard of it.

Those who make Northport their year-round residence go to great lengths to maintain the quaint integrity of this historic community, which has roots that date back to the early 1600s with the arrival of a contingent of French explorers. So it’s not surprising that when Matt Timberlake and crew arrived in town to tackle an intricate sewer line rehab project, the locals took interest.

“You have to understand the dynamics of the community to fully understand this project,” Timberlake says. “I don’t remember a time in the history of our company when a condition for accepting our proposal included a provision to educate affected residents about the process of how we would complete the project so homeowners understood exactly what was going on. The whole community got involved.”

Timberlake is vice president of the family-owned and operated Ted Berry Co., headquartered in nearby Livermore, Maine. Ted Berry Co. has been in business for more than 35 years and specializes in offering diverse methods of completing infrastructure installation and rehab projects. Timberlake had worked with the Northport Village Corp. since 2005, when Ted Berry Co. was contracted to implement an ongoing inspection of the town’s sewer system. During one of their routine inspections, Timberlake’s crew discovered a section of pipe that had become infiltrated by root growth.

Location, Location, Location
According to Timberlake, the project was a textbook case for a pipe burst. The affected sewer line originated from a residential street at its upper end, continued under four private residences, wound between two other homes and ended at a manhole located within 25 ft of the high tide mark of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the sewer discharge line was only about 200 ft in length, the beginning and ending manholes were not within view of each other. Excavation was a concern at the downstream end, given its proximity to the ocean and the highly visible Northport Yacht Club.

“Many things told us this was not an excavation job,” Timberlake says. “There were established trees and shrubs, walkways, lawns, patios and decorations to contend with. Had we plowed a trench, we would have had to dig right alongside the foundation of a couple of these homes. The long-term effects that disturbing a foundation may cause brought a whole other set of potential issues. Trenching was just not an option.”

Timberlake and trenchless technology supervisor Shawn Ready rolled up their sleeves over dinner one night and got to work on a proposal. Both had been on the inspection team that discovered the root infiltration problem, so the two men were intimately familiar with the layout. They quickly came to a consensus on the best rehab method, but the details of the plan took a bit more time and included stipulations that were somewhat unconventional compared to proposals the two had drawn up in the past.

“Although the village corporation had a legal easement to go through individual properties in order to maintain the sewer line, their first concern was how repairing it would affect the residents,” Timberlake says. “Explaining how we would complete the project to the affected homeowners and getting their buy-in made it an easy sell to the council slated to approve the job.”

The plan Timberlake and Ready proposed included going door-to-door with a representative of the village corporation to explain to residents exactly what needed to happen and how it would be accomplished. By doing so, Timberlake and his crew immediately won over the locals.

In order to preserve the downstream manhole near the shoreline and eliminate the need to employ excavation, the plan Timberlake and Ready devised called for pneumatic pipe bursting. Although the company had completed 40 to 50 static bursts in the past, this would be the first pneumatic burst for Ready and his crew. Therefore, Ready consulted with Brian Cowles, Ted Berry’s HammerHead rep, for guidance during the pre-planning phase and to ensure his crew was well-versed in the project’s details before getting started.

“We had traveled with Hammerhead to several pneumatic jobsites over the previous couple of years, so we were very familiar with the process,” Timberlake says. “It wasn’t really anything all that new. Some of the details of the pneumatic hammer, however, were things that internally we spent a great deal of time planning in advance. And HammerHead was a tremendous help.”

Timberlake went on to explain that the project would have been very easy to complete using static equipment, but he didn’t want to take any chances removing the downhill manhole or digging that close to the shoreline.

“Protecting the integrity of the site was important to us,” Timberlake says. “Nobody from the village corporation actually told us we had to do it a certain way. But we knew the smaller footprint we left meant they would be more apt to have us back. Plus, that’s just how we do business.”

After many hours of planning followed by a day of preparation, the burst commenced at 9 a.m. on a November morning. Ready and his crew had positioned a HammerHead HG12, a 12-ton winch, on the lower end with an 8-in. hammer and a 10-in. burst head at the topside. Using the “Manhole Exit Method,” a process patented by HammerHead that eliminates one excavation at the manhole, decreased the amount of excavation necessary by 50 percent. By lunchtime, the burst had been completed and the new pipe was in place. By early afternoon, backfilling was complete and services were restored.

“The job was completed in under four hours,” Timberlake says, “witnessed by what we affectionately called the ‘advisory committee’ … made up of local residents. One of the homeowners was present when we dug the topside launch pit on his property. He had approximately 60 plastic pink flamingos randomly situated on the site. I have pictures of Shawn [Ready] repositioning each flamingo back to its original spot from the map we had created prior to initiating the burst. Most were facing east, but there were a few that faced west. We made sure that we replaced each of them in their original spots and facing the same direction.”

Tips for Other Contractors
While proud of the work his crew performed on the Northport project, Timberlake viewed the process as just another example of how Ted Berry Co. approaches every job. And while a pneumatic burst was uncharted territory for his company, Timberlake has some valuable advice for other contractors.

“Don’t be too proud to ask for help,” he says. “Contractors are typically bad at that. We’ve been in business long enough that we know we don’t know everything. But we have connections to people who have the know-how when we are in need of technical support. Like our relationship with HammerHead, for example, they were onsite from start to finish assisting with completing our company’s first pneumatic burst.”
Timberlake is also a firm believer in involving all interested parties in the project — not only his own crew, but the supervisors, project managers and the affected residents.

“Educate the public,” Timberlake says. “A lot of times we show up on these jobsites and the public is standing there looking at us like, ‘What the heck are you guys doing here?’ We make it a point to go out of our way to knock on doors and let people know what we are up to. I think contractors as a whole need to get better at that.”

A Job Well Done
Aside from all the planning, calculations and gratification of a job well done, it’s the approval of local residents that means the most to Timberlake.

“I understand their anxiety,” he says. “I know how I would feel if a bunch of guys in vests and hard hats were to invade my property with all this equipment and not knowing what was going to happen. We never lose sight of that. I guess the biggest compliment to come from the Northport job was when the guy who was there when we first started the burst later renamed his home ‘Sewer View Cottage.’ We laughed about it at the time, but afterward, it really sunk in just how monumental that was.”

Randy Happel is a technical writer, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Ted Berry Trenchless Technologies prepare a plastic pipe for insertion into an existing sewer line on Stearns Road in Ogunquit Tuesday morning.

By Jim Kanak | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | December 06, 2007 6:00 AM

OGUNQUIT —
Residents on Stearns Road may have noticed some increased activity recently. That's because the Ogunquit Sewer District is getting ready to replace an aged sewer main there. What's interesting about the project, though, is the technology the district will use to replace the old pipe. It's called pipe-bursting and the process minimizes the need to dig up the road there to lay the new pipe.

"We're upgrading an old cast iron forced main that was placed there in 1962 or '63," said Phil Pickering, the district's Superintendent. "It's 1,600 feet. We'll upgrade the 4-inch cast iron pipe to a 6-inch high density polyethylene pipe. We'll use a pipe-bursting method, the same as we successfully used on the River Road project."

Put simply, pipe-bursting is a method in which an existing pipe is fractured and displaced while a new one is drawn in to replace it.

"We'll dig pits that are 400 feet apart," Pickering said. "We use a hydraulic hammerhead. We insert steel rods to pull the new pipe through and burst the old pipe. The rods have a cutting head that scores the old pipe. Then a bull head pushes the old pipe aside. It pulls a 400-foot length of the new pipe into the hole."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Guidelines for Pipe Bursting offers a detailed description of the method: "Typical pipe-bursting involves the insertion of a conically shaped tool (bursting head) into the old pipe," according to the Guidelines. "The head fractures the old pipe and forces its fragments into the surrounding soil. At the same time, a new pipe is pulled or pushed in behind the bursting head. The base of the bursting head is larger than the inside diameter of the old pipe to cause the fracturing and slightly larger than the outside diameter of the new pipe, to reduce friction on the new pipe and to provide space for maneuvering the pipe."

Pickering explained that the 400-foot lengths of pipe will consist of 10, 40-foot lengths that are fused together. "The pipe is all fused together, so there are no weak points," he said.

With the exception of the pits that will be dug, excavation is minimal. "It saves time, materials, and tearing up the road," said Pickering. "It's very cost-effective."

The cost of the project is $90,000, Pickering said. The Sewer District, as is often its custom, will serve as general contractor on the project overseeing the work being done. "We got price estimates from two contractors," Pickering said. "A third contractor we approached never submitted anything. [The winning bidder] is the Ted Berry Company of Livermore."

The project will start at the lighthouse and work its way up Stearns Road. Pickering estimated that the entire project would take five days, with another week or so for cleaning things up. "There will also be some minor excavation around the corners," he said.

The upgrade should eliminate the need for further upgrades for quite some time, given the quality of the new plastic pipe. "It has an estimated 100-year lifespan," Pickering said. "But it could be closer to 500 years. It's the type of material that nothing affects."

Tall True Tales
Filed Under: Reader Pipelines | January 2010 Issue The Cleaner Magazine

Like the fisherman who always has a great tale about the big one that got away, many cleaners can relate stories about difficult trenchless jobs that tapped their problem-solving creativity. But unlike fish tales, these stories aren’t embellished. The only imagination at play was the ingenuity used to surmount a challenge. Here are a few difficult trenchless projects that cleaners nonetheless reeled in hook, line and sinker.

“One of the toughest jobs we’ve ever done was a fairly large-scale sanitary sewer pipe-bursting project on the island of Nantucket, Mass.,” explains Matt Timberlake, vice president of Ted Berry Co. Inc. in Livermore, Maine. “The majority of the town is under historic protection, even the actual cobbles in the cobblestone streets. So leaving any type of footprint whatsoever held significant ramifications.

“We had to drive four hours, then ferry our equipment 17 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to the island. The job consisted of about 5,500 feet of static bursting of sanitary lines six to 10 inches in diameter. The pipes were about 100 to 125 years old, almost all made out of terra cotta.

“Unfortunately for us, the repairs were scattered throughout the whole town. On a typical sewer replacement job, you start at one end of a street and work 1,000 feet to the other end. But this project consisted of 22 areas, and 25 different bursts. Every street we did, we had to attack like it was a whole new job.

“We were working for a contractor who had only heard about pipe bursting before this project. So we had to train the contractor about our needs, which added another level of complexity. Also, the island is mostly sand. That’s good and bad for pipe bursting. The good thing is the bursting is usually done at a relatively low tonnage. The bad thing is you run into issues with shoring static machines. So we did a lot with I-beams and driving piles to shore the machines.

“Another big challenge was utilities, which were either unmarked or were very close to sewer lines. Every morning, we weren’t 100 percent sure what we’d find under the ground. On one of the very first streets we did, we found water line services touching the sanitary sewer line.

“We started the job on Dec. 1, and it took about three months. We never broke a utility while pipe bursting. There were a couple of applications where the water mains ran directly parallel to the sewer mains – only four inches apart in one area.

“The key to success with a project like this is anticipating problems. If you anticipate some things and really do your homework, and go at them from a team approach, the challenges are manageable. The unmanageable challenges are the ones you haven’t anticipated and have no way of dealing with.”

Frequently asked questions?

I have an existing 6" Cast Iron Forced Sanitary Sewer main and I would like it replaced, however it must be replaced with a new 8" pipe. Is pipebursting an option?

Answer: Yes, Pipebursting is the only trenchless rehabilitation method which allows the newly installed pipe to be of larger diameter. It is standard to increase pipe sizes by one size, additional upsizing can also be accomplished however it can add additional risk.

My Municipal Water System is aging and we are looking at Pipebursting. Is Pipebursting done with water mains?
Answer: Yes, Water main replacement is the fastest growing market for pipebursting worldwide. With faster installation times and the ability to pre-chlorinate pipe prior to installation construction schedules are greatly reduced and the footprint is much smaller.

What types of pipes can be replaced using Pipebursting?
Answer: Almost all makes of pipes can now be replaced utilizing the right equipment and tooling packages. VCP, AC, PVC, CI, DI, RCP, and more.

What is the average length of a pipeburst?
Answer: While the length varies depending on conditions it is common for installation lengths to be between 300-600'.

Does the new pipe have to be HDPE?
Answer: No, while most trenchless installation utilize HDPE advances in materials now allow installations to be PVC, Ductile Iron, and other composites specially made for certain applications.

What is the smallest pipe the Ted Berry Company has replaced by pipebursting?
Answer: We have replaced 2" pipes made of both Cast Iron, Copper, and Plastic.

What is the largest pipe the Ted Berry Company has replaced by pipebursting?
Answer: 24" gravity sanitary sewer main

Can an existing pipeline like a 8" water main be replaced with a much larger 12" pipe by pipebursting?
Answer: Yes, in many cases double upsizes are becoming more common. Ask us how.