The Snyderville Water Reclamation District was busy all summer with the sewer-line rehab project along Kearns Boulevard.
Now a similar project starts next Monday, near the Marsac Avenue roundabout, although this one will be shorter.
The director of the Water Reclamation District, Mike Luers, said the technology in the Marsac project is the same as they’ve employed on Kearns Boulevard. They put in a new pipe without having to dig up the old pipe.
“You take a flexible tube that is saturated in resin, and you put it down the manhole, and you fill it with water or steam, and you press it up inside the existing pipe. You heat it, and it hardens in place. So when you get through, you have a new pipe inside the old pipe, without having to dig up the road and disrupt the traffic more than we have to.”
He said this can affect the capacity of the existing pipeline, but not much.
“These liners are fairly thin, and they’re very smooth on the inside. So actually, you don’t lose as much as you think you might. (Leslie) So how thin are we talking about? (Luers) On a smaller pipe, we’re talking millimeters, maybe one centimeter. On the larger pipes, it might become 9 millimeters or 10 millimeters. And it also depends on the type of material we use.”
This upgrade, said Luers, can be good for 75 to 100 years. And it can be done even in cold weather.
“We can insert the liner. And then we have equipment on site to heat it up. So it’s just a matter of heating up the water or steam. There’s a couple of techniques you can do this. And then we have sensors inside the pipe to let us know when we reach the temperatures that we need to, so that it hardens properly.”
To continue the existing stream of wastewater, Luers said they pull it aboveground—which can be seen in the Kearns project—feed it through temporary pipes and pumps, and put it back in the main line further downstream.
The pipe project on Marsac, running south from the roundabout, is relatively short, and will start up on Monday November 4th.
“We have one section of pipe that concerns us, up underneath Marsac. And it’s a steel pipe. That was the engineering way of doing things way back when. And that steel pipe is being corroded due to sewer gases. And we want to put a liner in that sooner rather than later. It’s only 126 feet long. But it’s something we want to line before it fails.”
Luers said they’re trying not to be too disruptive around the Marsac Building through Election Day the 5th. The most activity will occur on the 6th through the 8th.
He said that during the work, flaggers will be there 24/7. The eastern lane of Marsac will be closed, as well as Marsac’s intersection with Ontario Drive . Driveways of homes on that eastern side will have access, subject to temporary disruptions. In any event said Luers, the inconvenience will only last for a few days, rather than weeks.
The Kearns project is taking a lot longer. But Luers said in that case they were working with 23 segments of pipe running 1.4 miles. And that project still needs some work.
“We did have some problems with the initial couple segments of pipe. And that’s the reason they’re still out there. They have some cleanup to do and some cosmetic. And we’re not real happy with the liners that were installed. So they’re having to come back and work on those. And then they’ll actually install another liner after they clean the old liner up.”
Luers said next year they will do a similar upgrade on the line, from Quinn’s to their Silver Creek Treatment plant, and also on the line running to the intersections of Highways 248 and 224. In all, the pipeline from that intersection to the treatment plant is seven miles, and the upgrade costs a total of $1.2 million.
And there are pipeline segments getting upgraded near Highway 224—by the McPolin white barn and the intersection with Park Meadows Dr. But Luers said those segments are on the road side and work there won’t be as disruptive.
