"And now for something completely different..." as Monty Python was fond of saying. How many times have I photographed these Sycamore trees and posted the pictures on the blog? A lot! A couple of weeks ago I noticed some of these orange barrels alongside the sidewalk, and there were some men working with some machinery during the day. Turns out they were welding sections of plastic pipe together. I think it is new pipe for natural gas. And I *think* that it will be installed under the road by this really cool process where they dig a hole in the street, and a machine drills down at a shallow angle, and then drills horizontally under the street for several hundred feet, and then the gas pipe, is pulled through this 300 foot hole, thus installing the new pipe without digging up the whole street! What a cool thing that is!
Here is a view of two long sections of the welded pipe lying alongside the roadway.
Not digging up the entire road to install is a very ingenious. Keep watching and posting.
ReplyDeleteJoan
The process you will see in action is called Horizontal Boring and may also be known as Directional Drilling, which is very common for running underground piping for gas, cable and electrical conduits. I am surprised to see gray plastic pipe for gas lines; yellow or yellow-orange polyethylene plastic pipe is usually used for gas. You will have to ask one of the workers about this!
ReplyDeleteI think it's brilliant not digging up the whole street! Yes, I want to find out more about the process...betsey
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