All you need to know about HDPE piping is right here, right now. This webinar is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the unique benefits of using HDPE pipe.

HDPE pipe continues to grow in popularity for its many advantages over legacy pipe material. The landfill, natural gas, geothermal, mining, and oil patch markets have relied on its leak-free, corrosion-resistant, flexible, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) benefits for years.

Get a complete overview of how this innovative, sustainable piping solution can boost your long-term ROI and help achieve your project goals.

We’ll cover:

• The unique benefits of HDPE
• HDPE joining techniques
• Open cut and trenchless installation methods
• Project design considerations

Will Vodak 

Okay, we’ve already had one technical, technical challenge. So we’re gonna get done with all of that right off the bat. Welcome, everybody, my name is Will Vodakr with ISCO industries. Thank you so much for joining us today we’ve got an awesome program for you. For those of you new, intermediate advanced HDPE ingest this one and a half hour long session, you’re going to be up to speed on basically everything that you need to know. So we’re really excited, we’ve got a ton of stuff to cover. So let’s dive in. The first thing though, is let’s get a quick set of instructions done first, everybody knows how to interact with us, all your video and audio is turned off to enhance our quality. Also said if you guys are sitting on your couch at home, you can not worry about the cat behind you. If you have any feedback or troubleshooting resume, we will do our best to help out. Please go ahead and use that chat feature down below. And most importantly, if you have questions, please go ahead and use that q&a tab there. That’ll allow us to track your questions. We’ll answer some on air. Some here in studio we’ve got Timmy Tipton HDPE wizard, David Osborne, also a guru of HDPE on the line to answer as many questions as possible. So please, this works really great when we’re all conversing and having good honest questions about this. So everybody knows that I hear on this program that you’ve been here try to do my best. But I always have to refer my partner here. Mr. Garry Bouvet. Garry, welcome back. What’s going on? We’ll

Garry 

Great to be here. After the holidays, you’re looking good after Thanksgiving. Thanks,

Will Vodak 

thanks, hear you too. We’ve got I’m really excited. This is actually our largest ever audience on ISCO insights. So it’s just going to be a heck of a show. Fantastic

Garry 

to that, that many people want to learn more about HDPE

Will Vodak 

pipe, though, word of mouth is spreading that you know you’re gonna be on it. So for those that don’t know who you are, tell us why we should listen to you.

Garry 

Well, my name is Garry b. I’ve been with this NGO industries for over 25 years. So I’ve been working in this polyethylene world, for almost 30 educating people about polyethylene, about fusion, all the great benefits and features that HDPE brings will and looking forward to doing that again, today. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

it’s gonna be an awesome presentation. So let’s jump. Without further ado, let’s jump straight into this, we’ve broken this out all, all four of these are what we call the fundamentals of HDPE piping, taking you from the balance of properties, which covers material properties and HDPE characteristics to joining methods, which is fusion, and other joining methods, installation types, we have, you know, slippers and pipe, or Piper. And design characteristics which some of our engineers in the audience might be interested in. So we’re going to break this up by these four subcategories. So let’s dive straight into the balance of properties Garry with HDPE. And the first and the reason why we’re here is because of pe 4710. This is a as you can see by you know, this is a black fusible pipe that we really specialize in really believe in here. It’s taking enormous market share the last decade, and it’s growing. Hence the reason why we have so many people on here today. So tell us about the evolution. You said you’ve been working with HDPE for the last, I thought I heard 80 to 90 years. So tell us what it’s been like over that 80 to 90 year life cycle days,

Garry 

it feels that way. What else, but no polyethylene, right? People think of it as a new product. And it may be new to you, because you haven’t had any experience with it. But polyethylene was created back in the mid 50s. And when it started there, it’s it kind of evolved to where we are today, continual improvements in polymer structure, the mechanical strength, slow crack growth resistance, those have all continued to improve as the residents have gone from a low density to a medium density to where we are now with the high density 4710. Rosa.

Will Vodak 

So I mean, you’ve seen different pressure classes over the years when you first started out deer 11 was not 200 psi seen advanced? I mean, this is really like the iPhone. What are we on now? 14 or 15? You know, it’s got basically everything you could possibly want. And we’ve had decades of experience getting it to that point. So everything kind of revolves around this 4710 resin, Garry, can you fuse, or get even 3608? And how does that work with 4710. So

Garry 

you can 3608 really doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is 4710 but the two materials if you have an existing 3608 pipe in the ground, or even 3408 Those can all be fused together with the 42 The 4710 Yeah, so

Will Vodak 

you know another reason why we’re so passionate about this and we’re going to take a deep dive on This, but this is fusion. When I first got into this industry, I learned that you just put pipes together, and there’s all these joints everywhere and you know, they’re gonna leak eventually, that’s not the case with HDPE. The whole purpose is getting as much as you can out of that pipe. What’s not allowable leak or Drake area, it

Garry 

is zero, right? We know allowable leakage rate, and fusion is the key component. And F fusion uses heat and pressure to create a joint whether it’s end to end of pipe, or saddle fusion sidewalls, if you’re doing an outlet or a lateral extension, all those fusions are done with heat and pressure.

Will Vodak 

So it looks like on this photo here that basically you’re bringing two pipes together and they become one essentially, is there any difference between those pipes after after the fusion? Absolutely

Garry 

not, you can use 1000 foot of pipe together, you got 1000 foot stick? Sweet. Absolutely. ASTM

Will Vodak 

F 2620 covers how we kind of use pipe and and the practices there. And we’ll get into that here in a little bit. So that’s kind of a basic overview before diving into these material properties. I’d like to go ahead and ask the audience of which we have a lot of people on today. Have you ever used HDPE pipe in any of your project? So let’s get this this conversation flowing here? Do you use it quite a bit? Maybe once or twice? Or if you’re like me most of the time? What is HDPE? Again? So Garry, we’ve got a wide range of audience members here. Have you looked at say? Well,

Garry 

I think that partially like I think the second one occasional usage,

Will Vodak 

there’s a lot, there’s 60% of our users are using it all the time. 33% Maybe once or twice, and we’ve got, you know, a couple dozen that have not used it at all. So people of all of all backgrounds here with HDPE excited about that. Just a friendly reminder, please keep the questions coming into the q&a tab. And we’ll be picking those up. So Garry, let’s get going with the material properties. There are many we’ve decided to kind of focus here on the seven that we really find to be the most applicable HDPE is extremely versatile in all sorts of different applications. Can you tell us why that is? Well,

Garry 

you know, from the corrosion resistance, that’s a big advantage. If you think about the where HDPE comes from the core components that make up HDPE, pipe resin. I’ve been in the ground for billions years, there’s not a lot of things that attack it. So it’s a very inert product, right. And so that’s why it has, as you see on this chart, the widest range of pH capacity, right? It can handle pretty much everything but a pure acid. Sure.

Will Vodak 

And we see it in those situations we see in really corrosive environments, we also see it for, you know, really environments that don’t need that it just because of its fusible properties. So it can really handle the wide range. And there aren’t too many applications where we don’t find it to be a great fit, for example, we’ll be honest of those that we don’t think it’s applicable for. The another reason why is because of the flow characteristics. So I believe our colleague, David Osborne actually took this photo, and I believe that pipe was in service for something like 2025 years,

Garry 

actually, it’s 32. I guess older than you okay. Yeah. About married say that. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Will Vodak 

Not as wise. So, Garry, what I mean, what is that? Like? I mean, I would imagine a pipe to look more, a little bit more beat up, I guess, at the end of

Garry 

the day, well, you know, most people are familiar with metal pipes and metals have it inert capacity to our innate, I said, use the wrong word in a capacity, they’re going to, they’re going to corrode, right? They absorb water, bacteria grows on, they’re going to corrode, whether it’s internally or externally, it’s just a natural occurrence of metal pipes. That pipe that you’re seeing there that polyethylene on the top picture, that’s 32 year old pipe had been in service, you don’t see any tuberculate action or build up on the inside, like you see on that, you could probably just wipe away that little film and say it’s just, it’s just a discoloration from the metal vows right from the water passing through those that discolored the pipe.

Will Vodak  

So that C factor of 150, which is I think, better compared to other materials, it’s a tunnel continuous, Is that valid for the lifecycle of the pipe than it

Garry 

is from day one or 100 years? We’ve got to we’re talking about a polyethylene pipe that is 100 year design life to it. And now you’ve got a pipe system that’s going to not corrode or have any build up. So your flow values are going to be constant for well over 100 years.

Will Vodak 

What about that bead, though? Doesn’t that bead impact the C factor? Well,

Garry 

since we haven’t shown in the beat, but when we find a pipe that B is present in that pipe, if it’s a force main, that bead is no barrier to any of the flow that have been calculated for the HDPE pipe. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

we’re getting we’re jumping a little bit ahead of ourselves there, Garry, thanks for reel me back in but it’s no different than, you know, circulation. I mean, if you really think about it, so let’s move on to the durability of HDPE. We’ve got a video to show this here in a little bit, Garry. But this is maybe not the strongest in terms of, you know, you’re not going to get maximum pressure ratings out of this compared to other materials. It’s certainly a heck of a lot tougher, though.

Garry 

Well, right. And people think of plastic being soft, it’s not not as tough. And I kind of beg to differ. I think polyethylene is one of the most durable products we have out there. You’re going to see more examples of that. But the best way that I think we can show that is what they do a lot for in the gas industry. Yeah, absolutely using it, what you see in that middle picture, there is a hydraulic squeeze tool will this, this tool can actually hydraulically flatten that pipe, completely down, shutting off any flow of mud, whether it’s a gas or whether it’s water, while and allow you to do repairs, do an extension, whatever you need to do downstream from that, from that shut off from that isolation. So as

Will Vodak 

you can see here on this video, it is literally we are hydraulically squeezing this pipe Shut up. And I think that’s great, because we can do this as it’s done in the gas industry every day. And there’s no, you know, the pipe is not damaged. Because of this, we’re able to simply shut off flow. But we think this really illuminates how great this product is, in terms of its toughness, its flexibility, its durability, any concern about that popping back over time know,

Garry 

if you’ve got internal pressure, it’s going to help, you know, bring that pipe polyethylene has a memory, it will come back to its original shape. Now, in most instances will they’ll rotate that that operator will rotate that tool 90 degrees and help re round it quicker.

Will Vodak 

So here we have, it looks like a floodplain or some sort of washed out here. And Garry, it looks like it was taken back in the 60s. So what was that like, on top of that pipe out there?

Garry 

Man, man the age jokes. But that was a 24 inch line that is actually still in service. They did have a massive flood that came through and, and wiped out all of the bedding and backfill around that pipe. But yet that pipe is still intact as it strung across that ravine.

Will Vodak 

And this also means it’s seismically resistant. So if you’re in an area where there’s earthquakes, ground movement, or you’re just concerned about we’re spending a lot of money on putting these systems in Garry, in my opinion, why not put a product that’s going to stand the test of time out there for hundreds and hundreds of years fusible leak free able to withstand earthquakes, that seems like a no brainer to me. So let’s keep going down these material properties. Thank you so much for the questions. Everybody keep them coming. As I said, Timmy and David are here with us to keep them answered in real time. And if you don’t if you see a question that is kind of hanging out there, we’re going to answer it live a little bit later on air. So the temp range Garry? How far you know, what’s the temp range of HDPE? Is it is it Can it handle cold weather as well as hot weather?

Garry 

Absolutely will polyethylene pipe can be installed in all kinds of elements. And we’ve we’ve been on projects all around the world doing doing work up in, you know, the Arctic and, you know, supreme cold areas to extreme hot areas, right in the deserts and, and so forth, very accommodating material. So as you can see on the table there negative 40 degrees to plus 140. Now those temperatures are actually talking about what can flow inside a temporary rash through the pipe, right? What happens if water freezes in the pipe, no damage to the pipe whatsoever. The pipe will expand it’s flexible, it will absorb that growth until the water thaws and then starts moving again. No damage to the pipe whatsoever.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, this is this is fantastic. Here we have Texas. We all know it can get pretty hot down in Texas. We’ve got what looks to be like the Canadian tundra up there. I mean, it’s just looks freezing. And there’s some insulated pipe there. There’s some actually hot water on the left there. Right? It really just withstand such a versatile range of temperatures, right? A couple of good questions that we want to just touch on here. Max is asking Can the HDPE pipe be compressed to stop the flow at any point in the system? Or can it only be done while it’s new with a squeeze off tool?

Garry 

Oh no, that squeeze off Max is done at any time in the life of that pipe. Because again, there’s you know, no damage to the pipe whatsoever. So you can do that. That squeeze off at any time. The only that I’d say caveat to that is you can’t squeeze off in the same spot. So once the squeeze off has occurred on the pipe, it simply has to be a day identified and marked, so that somebody else doesn’t come back and squeeze off years later in the same spot. So

Will Vodak 

if the pipes will disclose and once before that we’re gonna, we’re gonna get it working here. One of the, I think the best uses of HDPE. And abilities for contractors and owners and engineers and everybody like, is because of the versatility this product for being installed. The bend radius, Garry wants you to tell us why, you know, we can bend this pipe in oftentimes in a complete circle that’ll fit on a truck,

Garry 

right? I mean, you see the bend radius here, it’s all dictated by the DR of the pipe. So but commonly, you know, Dr. Levin is the most common pipe. So 25 times the outside diameter is a pretty good rule of thumb for flexibility, the bending of HDPE pipe that can help eliminate fittings on job sites, because you can bend it around the terrain, and we can see that in some of the pictures there you pulled up, that’s a 36 inch HDPE pipe for a water transfer in Guatemala along the mountain side, there’s not an elbow on that line, those are just long lengths of HDPE pipe fuse together, that have bent around the contour of the mountain.

Will Vodak 

So we can ship 2346 inch in coils, Garry, and just to give you an understanding of that that’s that’s several 100 feet, at least maybe sometimes several 1000 feet that can fit on a coil and be shipped on a truck. When you’re talking about 36 inch pipe. Still, the flexibility greatly enhances the ability to eliminate 40 fives 22 and a half sometimes, you know and make these curves and allow it to creatively be installed. It also allows Garry when you’re trying to pull out your driveway in the morning. And we’ve got a looks like a BMW seven series there, Garry, life’s good for you. I’m glad. But all kidding aside, this doesn’t really illuminate. I mean, this is a fuse piece of pipe. And look at that. I mean, I know we’re pulling out of a driveway here. But this helps you get that pipe into a trench or into a ditch.

Garry 

Absolutely. It’s why polyethylene pipe is the pipe of choice in a lot of those trenchless technologies that we’re going to talk about a little later. Will

Will Vodak 

was asking a good question here. Let’s go back to this. I’m gonna I’m gonna push you live on air here. So let’s say we’ve got a 10 inch pipe, well, can we go through this this actual equation so that we can help make sense of that? Okay, so we’ve got a 10 inch pipe. And let’s just come up with an easy math solution. Why don’t you use 20 inch 20 inch pipe okay, because that’s OD is the is. So help explain how this how this process works in terms of figuring out what the bend radius is right as pi. So

Garry 

we know the radius right is from the center of your basic geometry, right, the center of a circle to the outside of that line or the middle of that line. So and let’s take 20 inch pipe, it’s an OD is 20 inch, and if the bend radius is 25 times the outside diameter. Well, that that simple math that even I can do without the calculator here to double check and

Will Vodak 

work. So we’re looking at 500 inches for the better eight for the radius of that circle radius of that circle. So

Garry 

500 inches directly.

Will Vodak 

We’ll great question and look at that we’re able to do math live on Erina. So what do we have next? After this beamer here? We’ve got the weight of HDPE I absolutely love this one. I think it’s the safest pipe material to install. I think it’s one of the easiest that in combination the flexibility really allows basically easy maneuverability on site these this translates into less material handling equipment, lower installed dollars, I think it’s just and it’s a great way to transport safely pipe around sites, right

Garry 

I mean, those those metal pipes those, those rigid pipes we talked about those are all installed are typically in the trench right. And now you’re talking about a pipe that can be fused outside the trench and simply lifted and dropped into place.

Will Vodak 

guys keep the questions coming. We as you can tell are going to struggle a little bits of me to maintain with them today. But listen, if we can’t get to you in this session, we will get back to you very shortly after so please keep them coming. We’ve got a now the surge allowance with HTTP I really want to spend a little bit of time here Garry often will see Dr. 11 HDPE. Dr. elevens capable of 200 opportunity psi operating pressure with HDPE. Our our psi is listed are for operating pressures. Typically though, we’ll see you know only a 6070 psi service for a Dr. 11. And it’s not our job to question or understand the design but mostly we can we can oftentimes get away with that if surge is being taken into consideration for needing a 200 psi pipe. So will you work us through The kind of the surge allowances and what’s built into the

Garry 

right with polyethylene will be in a flexible material, it has the ability to absorb those surge, occurrences that shutting off a valve opening a fire hydrant, whatever the case may be. So polyethylene is this, as you said, well, the pressures that are listed are working pressures. So with the surge allowance polyethylene pipe has an ability to handle recurring surges at one and a half times the working pressure. Okay, so that Dr. 11 200 psi, they can handle recurring surges over and over again, at 300 psi, up to 300 psi. And occasional surge, it can handle two times add up to 400 psi. So we don’t with polyethylene pipe, we don’t take the surges into account, because that’s inherently already built into the pipe properties, that

Will Vodak 

two times safety factor is there. And really, it can have mostly unlimited recurring surge cycles. So long as it’s not continuous without any damage to the pipe

Garry 

without any damage. The testing that has been been done on HDPE pipe went well over 10 million cycles on search cycles. And the pipe didn’t fail. I think they stopped the tape eventually, as we keep paying for tight, it’s not failing. Right.

Will Vodak 

So let’s take a look at this in one of our testing facilities. And you can see up top Well, yeah, yeah, that’s obviously that’s our mascot here. And we’re taking a sample piece of pipe here it doesn’t again, because of the Dr. system, this is great. Doesn’t matter if it’s 10 inch, or 12 inch or four inch or 36 inch, it is all going to behave exactly the same way based on that Dr. System. Yep. So I remember this was probably a IDR 11, if I remember Yes, and we’ve kept it at one end. And we’ve put a a blind on the other end. And our ducky is going to be kind of in the in the line of fire there, unfortunately. So now all we’re going to do is we’re going to pump this thing up completely full of pressure. And I want you to see here, as we start this test, you know, you might be concerned about that about the two times surge. But we go beyond that, even with our safety, because even if we have a two times search, it’s still really four times the first pressure for Polyak. Right? So four times is the catastrophic failure mode will when the pipe is actually going to run through there go down the vibration pipe jump so that you won’t

Garry 

fail right at eight on the on that Dr. Levin pipe. So that’s four times the working pressure that pipe a huge safety factor built into the height. Right.

Will Vodak 

And I love the other part of this is you can see the failure mechanism is not going to run the length of the pipe area. It’s isolated to this to this specific place. Correct? Yeah, that’s

Garry 

called propagation when it travels, multiple links, right? It doesn’t propagate like other materials, you people have seen, it’s isolated, it’s like the balloon, blow it up, blow it up, and it pops in one spot, right?

Will Vodak 

Much might be easier to repair that as well, which we’ll get into here in a little bit. So a lot of questions about sizes that I’m seeing pass through the chat here. Let’s get into some material options, Garry, with HDPE. You know, I always say unfortunately, we have too many options for you. What size do you want? What do you already want? Do you want an IPS or dips? What stripe? What color striping? Do you want what pressure rating do you want on it? We’ve got too many options. If you can design if you can draw it, we can build it. So Garry, what are some of the HCP fittings out there for people’s Yeah, fine.

Garry 

I mean a system is never complete unless you have all of the the fittings to do it right. So pipe is one aspect but the fittings are a critical element. We have things molded fittings, you see a lot of pictures, molded fittings will those range typically from eight inch and down. So once we get above that eight inch, we’re commonly dealing with what we call fabricated fittings, elbows on on mitered sections fuse together, three piece tees, that type of thing and the fabricated section. So you’ve got a combination here and these pictures will got some transition fittings, you’ve got service connections, if you need to run a lateral off the pipe, whether it be a line service line, or whether it be a full blown, pressurized transfer transmission line.

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. So I mean threaded transitions MJS we can get into any other material. We can also build most things out of fabricated fittings and and even some custom structures which we’ll get to a little bit later on. So really, we’ve got a variety of IPs and D IPS sizing Garry, what is that? So

Garry 

that’s IPS Iron Pipe Size and dips is ductile iron pipe size. So as polyethylene moved into the more work in the municipal world that had typically been ductile iron or ductile iron sizes like PVC, these ODS, and dips match those of these on the existing materials.

Will Vodak 

And you can see here that basically the DVR system to the right indicates that pressure rating, we’ve listed some of the common dimension ratios here, seven 911 17, those so those are some of the more common and that is basically the wall thickness divided by the outside diameter. And all of these indicate a certain pressure class. So this is I.D. controlled piping. So as you increase pressure, Garry, the idea of shrinking correct that is correct, right. Yep. So we’ve got anything basically from a half inch all the way up through I mean, they’re even 120 inch and above. I don’t think it’s cut off at 120 amps. Yeah,

Garry 

the largest solid wall pipe to date in North America installed was 88 inch for pressure surface pressure application. Correct. Correct. So

Will Vodak 

that was actually this job you can see down here, and we’re involved in several of those projects. If you’d like to learn more about that, please let us know. The last thing I can say is striping, Garry, tell us about the striping conversation. Can I just paint it on the side of the on the pipe? Yeah,

Garry 

paint doesn’t usually last too well on HDPE pipe well, but stripe color stripes can be put on the pipe. It’s part of the CO extrusion of the when the pipe is manufactured. And you know there is a color kind of a plumbing pipeline color code that goes with that green for sewer blue for potable water. You’ve got lavender or purple for reclaimed water, why am I actually lighter now you’ve got red for fire protection, you got yellow for a gas distribution. So those are permeable the common industry norms for colors. Now, if you’re in the audience, and you’re dealing with mining, the striping, it means absolutely nothing of what’s flowing through the pipe. It’s more of an identification of the size of the pipe. So

Will Vodak 

I’m talking to us about what what needs are going to be met. There’s so many different factors in determining what might be the best size commercial availability as well, Garry, I hate to say it, but that I mean, that is a factor here, right? So please consult with your ISCO local representative. And we’d be happy to walk you through kind of what’s available and do our best to source you exactly what you need. Okay, that wasn’t too bad. We’re doing pretty well on timing here. Let’s go into some joining methods. This is some of the fun stuff, there’s good stuff, there’s what we like to do, which is the installation help with the equipment really makes sure that this is being put together with as great care as possible. So obviously, we totally spoke about this earlier on. But the main benefit to HDPE is the ability to fuse it, it’s going to be our recommendation all day long that if you can fuse it, fuse it. You know, we really think that there are many benefits to this. But there are some other ways to potentially join the HDPE as well. Let’s go ahead and touch on first the fusion though. So that I think this process when I first heard of fusion, I thought it was like nuclear fission bonding, you know, sandwiches for anatomy. This is a very simple process. It’s so easy that I can do it. So let’s get into blood fusion, Garry, what is but fusion?

Garry 

Well, blood fusion is the joining will have end to end plane ends of pipe, pipe the pipe or end of pipe into fitting. It is the most common method for joining HDPE pipe. And the ASTM 2620 as the standard that kind of regulates oversees the procedures and universal regardless of who the manufacturer of the pipe is. And it can be done on any size pipe from half inch to as large as somebody somebody can manufacture. There’s equipment out there great all around the world that can can do that type of work. And we’ve got several those machines on those larger diameters. And I think we’ve got a video of the process we do let’s

Will Vodak 

let’s go through the steps real quick first about what this looks like this is it’s you know, it’s as our friend Mark spelter likes to say it’s a recipe of steps you got to follow so that at the end of the day, the cake comes out of the oven exactly the way you want it. So this is a recipe this is a step list that, you know, if you follow you’re gonna get a successful joint but fusion is very easy to follow. So Garry, instead of going through these steps, I’m going to play this video so that you can kind of walk us through the steps as you go. And just a disclaimer. This is the hardest that Garry has worked ever in his entire life.

Garry 

It was hot out there that day. Well I won’t lie to you. But here we’ve got a 412 machine. We’ve got pieces of pipe. Our first step is to simply clamp the pipes in position this clamping serves a couple of purposes. One it holds that pipe in place. So allows us to do the other fusion Steps Look at you go about Yeah, on the speed on that. Dexterity is writable. So it holds the pipe in place so it doesn’t move. Also, it’s there as a part of a rerouting to get those pipes lined up properly. Once we’ve got it clamped, we bring a facer that facer has blades on both sides that are going to rotate simultaneously around both ends, trimming the ends of the pipe, removing any oxidation layer, getting those lands squared up and cleaned down to Virgin polyethylene. Once we’ve achieved that, you can see the shavings there that we’ve got to remove out of the fusion area. So we clean those shavings out. And we check for alignment. This is what we’re just making sure our pipe ends are fully squared lined up, there’s no gaps in it, you’re allowed 10% offset of the wall thickness. And since my dirty hands and gloves touch the end of the pipe, sticking a little isopropyl alcohol will and cleaning those ends. Now I bring in the heater plate heater is about 425 degrees, and we’re going to bring those pipe ends in contact with that heater. And then we’re going to reduce the pressure. So it’s going to be basically just contact pressure against that heater. And we got a minimum amount of time per ASTM. Once that’s achieved, we remove that heater you see the more times and we push those together under a predetermined pressure based on the size of the pipe.

Will Vodak 

Then you’re letting the cool I mean, that’s a specified time. Yeah, yep. And And lastly, look at there’s Garry proud of his work incredible stuff. Yeah, I don’t know if I could have done it as well. But that looks pretty good. Garry.

Garry 

Now goals and procedures will that we walk through? It’s those same steps, right? Whether it’s half inch, or 8085. Right? It’s the same procedure. What will change is the mechanics of the equipment. You may have machines on the small diameters that are manual, right then to semi automatic, like we demonstrated there, then you get into the much bigger pipe. Everything’s automated. You’re just operating levers.

Will Vodak 

Greg Johnson is asking, is there a difference in factory weld strength versus field fusion when considering the joining of pipe segments?

Garry 

That’s a good question. Technically, no, those joints are the same. As long as all diffusion parameters are, are followed properly. You have no moisture in the area. Now I will tell you in a shock condition you’ve got you’re not having to deal with as many elements that you would in the field, you know, dust blowing around, maybe you know snow or misting rain that could impair you. But technically no those fusions done properly and correctly within the parameters of ASTM are going to be exactly the same in joint strength. My

Will Vodak 

good friend, the anonymous attendee is asking, Does the DR have to match the fuse pipe? No, you confuse one step of Dr. In combination. So for instance, Dr. Nine to Dr. Levin can be fused for ASTM F 2620. You’re using the heat soak time for the thicker one and the fusion presser for the thinner one. And lastly, Evan is asking, Do you see where most failures coming from? Are they along the fusion sections, similar to a weak well explained, maybe, you know, and we don’t see too many. But fusion failures, I’m gonna I’m gonna be honest there. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about where failures might occur. I

Garry 

mean, the failures that do occur are improper procedure. In those steps that I did. Typically you’re going to see pressure during the melt that leads to a what we call a cold joint, that is a very fragile or brittle joint that will come apart, you know, probably in pressure test or even during just installation. But that is an operator error, right? Instead of having no pressure on during the heat up time. They they leave pressure during that.

Will Vodak 

And our good friend Jason Jason, thanks for being here is asking about certs. certificates and training, basically

Garry 

training. Yeah, we can certify contractor operators installers, to the standards to the ASTM standards, it’s about a day and a half of both classroom work and actual field fusion work where the joints are tested and destructively tested to make sure that the procedures were done properly.

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. All right, we’re gonna move on to the equipment here. Very few could pull this slide up there is basically a McElroy fusion machine out there for whatever pipe size you’re looking to fuse. And I think part of the reason that we’re so passionate about the equipment is that there are so many different choices to fuse certain sizes of pipe, we can make recommendations is it doesn’t have to go in ditch are how is the job site layout going to be? You know, are you trying to fuse multiple joints on just one thing area, you’re looking to move that machine down the line as it goes. So rather than spend a ton of time here on equipment, we do a ton of educational opportunities on equipment. But Garry, you want to do well just

Garry 

want to point to that I don’t want people in the audience thinking you got to buy all this equipment. For a point, you know, we have a largest rental fleet in North America available for people if so nobody needs to, you know, whatever size of pipe that you’re dealing with, that that is available from us. So

Will Vodak 

we’re going to move on now to just a couple of other types of fusions that we see typically, so sidewall fusion is a great choice. After the fact, we had a question in here about hot tapping the pipe. So this might be a really good right here, a good resource here. But this is to get an outlet, a saddle lateral onto that pipe, whether before you’re putting an installation, or after putting it

Garry 

away, we do reducing tees, right, sometimes those are put in during the installation, right, when they’re laying the main line there, they’ve got to know they’ve got a reducing lateral coming off, they’ll put that tee in place. While they’re, you know, putting the whole main line in, or as you indicated, will then come in after the fact and put that fitting in exactly where they need it at a later date. So saddle fusion, or sidewall fusion, as it’s called, is a great way to do that. And again, we’re still using the same elements that we serve that we talked about exact same wraps right here, you know, we got to clamp, we got to clean alignment, you’re heating your coolant, I mean, those really same concepts, we’re just doing it differently. Now we’re doing it on the outside of the pipe that can be on top and can be on the side and be on the bottom if we need to. I

Will Vodak 

can’t tell you, Garry, how many times this year we’ve seen a very long Foresman. And ultimately, the great part is you can lay out this entire force mean in one string to use it all together. And then at the end, install your earliest valves in two or three or four inch outlets after the fact using the sidewall right. It’s just a fantastic ability to do that post installation, or even in some cases, while it’s service. Did

Garry 

you say we had a question on hot tapping?

Will Vodak 

We did a question on hot tapping. So can you hot tap the pipe or do you need to saddle to do it,

Garry 

okay, you you can hot tap HDPE pipes, you can come in pipe running. Now you realize now I need a an outlet or a lateral coming off of that you do not need to shut that line down, you can do the sidewall fusion while the line is live, because again, we’re only fusing to the outside of that pipe, we’re not interfering with anything on the inside, right, you make that fusion, you let it cool, then we’re going to have to put a valve some type of control mechanism off of that outlet. So that when we do tap it, we can shut the flow off and you know, continue with our service run. So you’ve got your saddle, then you’re going to need a valve configuration there, then you essentially symbol your tapping equipment to the valve. And then you open the valve, tap the line out, retract your tool, close the valve, remove the tool that you can run your extension. And you’ve got to have that line Yeah,

Will Vodak 

and we can definitely work with you on accomplishing sourcing those parts and pointing in the right direction for the equipment or companies that specialize in that I made that so easy for you. I follow that. And honestly, I’m blown away, Garry, better than normal here. So the sidewall fusion equipment is very similar. We’ve got the sidewinder to the left or a combination unit to the right there. Both of these again, use specialized heater plates concave and convex to get a saddle fused on their

Garry 

16 inch will be the largest outlet of branch saddle that can be put onto the pipe right now. Correct. If it needs to be

Will Vodak 

larger, and you need an outlet. That’s what we call Timmy, and Timmy is going to help us out with that. So and let’s move on to you know, another great fusion type, often misunderstood nature. This is electrofusion everyone. And really what we’re doing here is we’re using couplings. And instead of using heat with with, you know, fusion plates or heater plates, we’re using electricity through copper wires to make that joint. So as you can see here, I love this image. Basically, this builds up all the pressure in those hot zones, as polyethylene heats up, it expands, it hits those cold zones, and that’s where it starts to hit that pressure, you need a combination of heat and pressure to be able to build that pipe up or build that fusion up. So we really like electrofusion for small diameter. There are some interesting challenges that we might try to recommend around it above 12 inches. But sometimes frankly, it’s the only way to accomplish the things and and we have to use a considerable amount of expertise and tools and knowledge to be able to get that fusion done. So really, there are so many nuances. We could probably spend a whole hour talking about the steps but really it’s vaguely similar set of steps to a bar At fusion, you’re gonna prep the surface, you’re going to make sure that everything is nice and organized and neat 90 degree cut, you’re going to make sure that you’re removing that that exposed material. And then you’re going to fuse it using a combination of, you know, several processors that we use and other equipment that can really make your life easy. I will say some of the challenges that we’ve seen Garry with electrofusion, when pipe is out of round, or you over peel that pipe, and there’s therefore there’s too much gap between that pipe and the coupler. That’s when there’s really not

Garry 

work or the pipe ends damage exactly been scarred up a little bit, right? You

Will Vodak 

really have to work hard to build up that pressure with electric fusion. And I think, again, it’s often that we’ve even seen some comments here, I believe, saying you don’t like electric fusion? Well, let’s understand why, frankly, I think it shouldn’t be for every fusion. But we really do like electric fusion, in the right circumstances, a tool in the toolbox. So we got a couple of questions here related to fusion. The first being connecting into manholes Garry, great question. Yeah, you could really use any number of these different types of of joining methods to get connect into a manhole structure, or the next that we’re going to talk about here shortly, right?

Garry 

I’m not sure if they’ve gotten an existing manhole, maybe a concrete and they’re trying to can how do they get that pipe inside the manhole? Or is it a polyethylene manhole? There? Definitely some deeper questions that we need to go into to try to answer that one. Sure. But it’s full picture. But

Will Vodak 

typically, you know, we can make views if the manhole has outlets on it, we can fuse up into that with with electrofusion coupling, depending on the size and Indische machine. What else do we have here? Can we sidewall fusion, certain angles, essentially, Garry? So wise, would be actually a butt fusion of sorts, using mitered cuts and miter joints you want to explain? Well, I

Garry 

think what he’s just saying, how, where can he orient that sidewall fusion. And you can put sidewall fusion at any degree at any angle, from from 12 o’clock all the way around it any any orientation, right?

Will Vodak 

But there is not a y that you could sidewall on to correct. So correct. If one of these days, we’re gonna have to switch roles, you’re gonna have to take the question, you’re gonna have to have to answer the questions, and I’m gonna try to do my best to to get them done. We also realized that, you know, there are times we hate to see it there. We have to, we have to use a mechanical connection. And I think this is often misunderstood. There are so many different types of mechanical connections out there, Garry, but you’re you’re the king of some of these, once you tell us what we need to be looking for,

Garry 

you know, there’s a lot of factors that go into mechanical connections. And there’s limitations, right? Depending on the size of the pipe, what’s your temperatures, operating temperatures that are medium running through that chemicals that might be running through the pipeline, a lot of elements go into deciding which mechanical connection is the best. And there’s a wide assortment, some, several have been designed for HDP. Right, we’ve got some of them on display here. We’ve got, you know, a multijoint, we’ve got a Romac alpha, alpha coupling, right, got a Victaulic coupling. So again, lots of choices, all scenario dependent, but they can provide a way to make a reliable connection when fusion is not an option. We’re always going to look for fusion first. But we know in time you shut about them doesn’t always mean you don’t have water still coming down the pipeline.

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. So some need an insert stiffener. You know, there are a lot of different ways to use the mechanical connections. Ultimately, you know, we can we can join HCP other pipe materials using some of these where maybe it’s an HDPE end, and the other end is maybe a grooved end, or maybe it’s just Blier.

Garry 

Right? Yeah. So a great, great choices, the best thing to do is consult with your HDPE expert, your local lisco representative, figure out, you know what the scenario is, and will determine what’s going to be the best course of action there.

Will Vodak 

So, one of the one of the main questions that we get Garry, we’re not going to spend too much time on this is repair with HDPE. Everyone always asked me Okay, well, this sounds great. I love the idea of HDPE. It’s going to be fantastic for our system, but what do we do when we need to repair it? My question, my answer is typically will how do you repair other piping materials because it’s the exact same way except we even have more options to be able to help with that. So you know, we have to go back to the fact that HDPE is not just inherently going to break apart at the joint. We typically don’t see many any repairs needed unless there’s third party damage. And in the case of this, it was a Friday afternoon and in Georgia, beautiful summer evening, and driller hit the nail. I mean, that is you couldn’t, you couldn’t have drilled holes on that pipe anymore. So, essentially, you know, that’s where we have to come with a couple of different options. Garry, once you help explain what we should be looking for, yeah, so

Garry 

you know, first of all, you know, what, what are our options for repair? Right? Can we can we shut the line off? What can we isolate that area? Is one right. The second one is, you know, can we fuse? Do we have enough space to do fusion? Maybe, but fusion? There are limited access equipments. They’re watered down, right? And we just don’t want Right, yeah, we’re gonna need, you know, dewatering equipment. You know, and every, every job is going to be different. There’s no one answer that applies every single time maybe it is in electrofusion. Right. And I think in this particular case, their their decision was kind of a combination of a couple. It was right, the client wanted

Will Vodak 

a permanent repair here. So what we did is we use some really cool index equipment. I know Steven just asked a question about this index equipment that we’re able to fuse inside of a trench. You can see here that is a actually a 36 inch pipe, and a 36 inch machine inside of the trench, two jaw hydraulics are all controlled up top, we were able to fuse on flange adapters on either side, the pipe was too old, they didn’t want to use an electrofusion coupling, it was too big. They also didn’t want to have a repair clamp in case it came off over time with expansion and contraction. So they decided to fuse ons and flange adapters drop in a spool piece with some some flanges on either side. And look at that, Garry, this is a permanent repair now for that plant. Right. And really, really exciting is and it happened over the course of a weekend solely restraint. Yep. Very easy. So we’re going to continue moving along, Garry, how are you feeling?

Garry 

Man? We’re doing great. Fun.

Will Vodak 

I think we’re doing great. I do want to talk about asking another poll question here, which is how likely are you to spec in HDPE into your next project? Is it a done deal? Is it maybe something that you’re mulling over there might be an alternative? You’re neutral? So far, we’ve gotten only one unlikely and one or two very unlikely. So you know, we’re hoping maybe by the end of this, you’ll have enough information to be able to make the best decision for your project. We’re going to let those poll questions keep going. But we’re going to talk really about installation types. Now, Garry, this is really fun, because there are a number of different ways to creatively install HDPE that are not available with every single piping material out there. So Garry, let’s start with maybe open cut. It’s it’s kind of what everybody knows. And it’s really pretty similar with most piping materials with HDPE. It’s actually can be pretty easy. Much easier. It’s

Garry 

easier and safer. Yes, right. Because as we said earlier, that fusion process can be done outside the trench, right, we can fuse that pipe up above out of the ground, we don’t have guys in the trench, we’re not dealing with shoring and trench boxes and those type of things. And once that is completed that fusion and that trench is open and dug, you can simply drop that pipe into place and then backfill accordingly. So open cut really, as I said, no different you know, from a trench design, maybe you don’t have to trim you know trenches big. Because we’re getting we’re doing the work outside of it. The ditch, it’s

Will Vodak 

safety is critical. It’s the number one thing and I have seen so many jobs where they just fuse the pipe along the trench and at the very end they lift it up and they they put it in and push it in, kick it in and get it in there however possible. Now we get a lot of questions on betting Garry Yep. And I think a lot of it is often overcomplicated. As long as you get you know proper compaction it’s very similar to bedding other plastic

Garry 

pipe materials. Yeah, the main thing if you’ve done any other plastic PVC, your your bedding and your your ditch design should be should be the same. Now, there are some exceptions, depending on the native soils, we may not need any, any bedding, the primary thing that we’re looking for, there’s no point loads, no rocks, to you know, pinch points on the on the piping, right.

Will Vodak 

So that you know, open cut is certainly an option. However with HDPE there are a number of less trench alternatives trenchless that can just provide an unbelievable combination of benefits, including Garry, this is South Beach. If you if you squint real closely you can see Garry Are you walking his way down south beach to his Lamborghini, for a fun weekend. There are a number of benefits from a social point of view, a disruption of businesses, cost benefits, lack of, you know, essentially tearing up a bunch of road and duration of the project you by going trenchless with HDPE. So let’s maybe start off with the first one of them, which is kind of a gateway drug into polyethylene. It’s, it’s horizontal directional drilling, it’s HDD. So So what is this? And why would we use it. So

Garry 

you know, this is a great way to put in install this is for new construction. All right, you’re installing a new line, maybe you’ve got an obstruction, that that you can’t dig, say a lake or river, a highway, interstate, whatever the case may be, you can, you know, start on one side, drill a hole, open it up wide enough to accommodate the pipe and pull pipe back in into that place into that same hole, and you’ve not disrupted anything around it,

Will Vodak 

I suspect, most have heard of this, this is this is a daily contact, it’s now and you can see here by this animation, what’s going on here and HDPE really due to its its flexibility, and its toughness is the best piping material to use for this. So as Garry mentioned, we’re trying to get around an obstacle, you use a combination of you know, several different types of equipment, to be able to kind of get a path going, pull that pipe back through, and essentially a way you go without having needing to go through the obstacle, you can go under it and around it exactly.

Garry 

This, you know, from an environmental perspective, you’re not disrupting, you know, the, the body of water, the stream, the river, or whatever the case may be. And really is a quick and, and even like I said, Downtown Miami, they would have had to tear up that entire street. Yeah. And they were able to directionally drill 54 inch pipe.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, even flexure would have been, you know, wouldn’t have been able to go out and enjoy the south beach scene there. So, most people know about HDD. pipe bursting is another great way to use HDPE to rehabilitate and kind of replace aging systems, we see it very commonly in the municipal kind of sanitary sewer world. So once you tell us more about Pipers,

Garry 

yeah, we’re seeing it more and more will even in municipal water work. Because you’ve got this, you know, this John goal, this of piping systems underground, you try to open cut. Now you’re replacing, you know, you’re displacing soils, you’re exposing, you know, other pipe systems to, you know, premature failure because you’ve disrupted their bedding or their backfill. So, pipe bursting is, is growing and growing. And it’s basically where you go in, you break up the existing pipe, and you’re replacing that pipe with a new line HDPE line taking the same annular space that was once there by whatever that material is. Now there’s two types of pipe bursting. Well, there’s pneumatic and then they’re static. So we’re, you’re showing this animation here. That’s a pneumatic, you’ve got a pneumatic hammer, attached to the front end of that pipe, it’s going through and it’s simply hammering or breaking up that fracture will pipe concrete, Clay cast iron, those things are fracture Rubble, and they break up, they get pushed into the soil, polyethylene pipe takes its place.

Will Vodak 

And this can be really good for we see a lot of asbestos cement pipe that’s been Piper’s so that the remediation process is too severe. Leave it in the ground, let’s let’s just Piper’s even deleted there. Right? So we’ve got a couple of different ways here, there. Maybe you could turn the sound on for these so that our audience could hear kind of that that process happening. I don’t know if y’all can hear this. But here we’re fracturing with a pneumatic system. Garry, this looks like some cast iron potential, right. And you can really see here that we see if I can get that to play again. I mean, it’s just, it’s just coming apart right instantly. Yep. And behind it, you can upsize a brand new piece of HDPE depending on soil conditions. We also

Garry 

here have one of their status system with an overseer here and this one is actually got both our cutters will sew these patterns. So for types that are not fractured and pluck the liner, right, even PVC will cut through it. And then the hammer will come through and push those pieces into the soil. Even saw it there on a repair coupling that it actually went through. went straight through the repair club, right. So this is the static where you’re actually pulling, pulling that, that head straight through that other pipe and those are the On Wheels on the front end or slicing it open.

Will Vodak 

And I love this because you can essentially get away with three or complete rehabilitation or replacement of a line, right. And let’s say you’re in charge of a district where the population is growing, you need to upsize capacity. This is a great method for you, you can oftentimes get away with, you know, a 16 inch out of a 12 inch yet or you know, maybe even even a little larger. In some case,

Garry 

it depends there’s a lot of factors that go into that your soil conditions, your burial depth, what’s around, right, you know, the existing pipe, all those factors come into how much you can upsize.

Will Vodak 

So we’re going to move on here, I know we’re going fast, but time is precious these days slip line and Garry, this is a great way to kind of rehabilitate pipe and oftentimes get a larger HDPE line into a into a situation where there’s typically something else failing. So once you tell us more about slippage, right

Garry 

I mean, slip lining is a tried and old, been done with a lot of different types of materials polyethylene, very convenient for that it can be pushed in, it can be pulled in, you are under sizing the existing the previous host pipe, but in many cases because of the failure that let’s say a steel line or a culvert or having we slipped line with polyethylene, we’re still getting it at least equal if not even better, right flow capacity, because of the smoothness that we talked about. The Hazel Williams, you know, see factor on polyethylene gets better flows than the the larger hosepipe did. Sure.

Will Vodak 

So here we’ve got an animation of some piping fused up, we’re gonna simply just pull it straight through it’s not a not a complicated process really not

Garry 

you usually at least a 10%. annular space is left which is commonly grounded and filled in around. But in sometimes it’s not that pipe. The thing anytime with your slippers slip lining with the polyethylene, we’re choosing a pipe size and der that’s going to can be a standalone pipe. If the host pipe is completely gone, we’re not depending upon that, that host pipe

Will Vodak 

so actually in the example we’re going to see by video it’s really cool project that we were involved with. At the end you can use a coupling perhaps in place if you can make a fusion you can you can put a fusion there. So really that slip lining in a nutshell, we are involved with the project with with our friend Robert metals at global underground that was involved with replacing a major section of pipe and they use some pretty creative equipment Garry to to get this done this

Garry 

one actually utilize directional drilling equipment will to do the slip line. This was a I believe a 72 inch old brick and mortar sewer that was starting to fail, they had several challenges associated with this project, they had to keep the line running while they did the repair. They had a very, very minimal meet right away to work in. So open cut wasn’t an option really. And so they will all put our heads together came up with installing 4048 inch HDPE pipe. But because they had to do the whole 7000 foot there was no areas to to break it up the sent the directional drill rod through the pipe. And then you actually use that to pull all 7000 feet of 48 inch pipe back end through the through the sewer line.

Will Vodak 

Look at you can see here a combination of everything we’re talking about here today. Right there is flexibility. There’s durability on this, you know, we’ve got a really strong piping material here that’s able to withstand a 7000 foot pole boasts some happy human beings.

Garry 

Why don’t you see the fist pump periodic? And will there air at

Will Vodak 

the very end of the job are? Exactly right. So, you know another thing we’re going to show here is a is a system that many might not have heard of which is compression fit technologies to essentially fill that annular space as much as possible. If I zoom in here, Garry, you can see right, we’re going to try to maximize as much space out of that existing system as possible. Friends, this is not a science fiction movie. This is happening in real time. So once you help walk us through our animation that our friends over at Murphy have provided us to talk a little bit more about this this process.

Garry 

So we talked about the properties of polyethylene being flexible. So what happens here will to maximize that full size of pipe that we’re putting in the host pipe. We’re actually temporarily reducing the OD the diameter of that pipe by compressing it and also pulling it like like a rubber band, you stretch it out. So you keep that tension up. All that reduced od into that host pipe. And then once it’s out far enough, then we relax the tension. And with polyethylene having that memory, it will go back to its original shape. And now we get a tight fit against the interior host wall tight

Will Vodak 

mind compressed fit the suede line, there’s a very bunch of different types of names for it, each with their own kind of technology. But this is a great process. And as you can see here from this video, Garry, we’re going to we’re going to skip ahead to here in a little bit to actually see one being installed. But this really maximizes the amount of of annular space that you are able to fill up or inside the system, you don’t have to fill any right that reduction in the in the ODI out there that’s that was a 16 inch, maybe a 16 or 18 inch line, you know dropped down about, you know, two inches or whatever, into a steel line. But again, if that host pipe ever goes away, corrodes deteriorates the polyethylene pipe,

Garry 

I itself can stand alone. Absolutely.

Will Vodak 

So we’re getting some good questions here that I want to just touch on before moving on, please stay with us. I know we’re we’re still on time here. We’re going into our advanced design considerations. So for all those HDPE questions that you’ve wanted to ask, we’re going to get to those here shortly. Are there? This is a good question. I’m not sure the answer this area. Are there any pre insulated HDPE pipe products that are compatible with HDD methods? So

Garry 

great question. We have pre insulated HDPE pipe we deal with all the time, particularly with district energy applications and such. And we have had successful directional drill installations with pre insulated pipe. I can cite in particular one that the that I worked on, which was in Arizona on a project, and it was 16 inch pipe that was pre insulated and directionally drilled about 900 feet with with no problem. That’s

Will Vodak 

amazing. I see I learned something new every day. And in this business, David is asking with the flexibility of HDPE can HDPE be pipe burst in the future to upsize capacity? We

Garry 

actually have pipe burst HDPE because of expansion. Yes, I just need right. Yeah, right. So that really burst it’s slice and dice like slice and dice yet. It’s

Will Vodak 

not factorable it’s not coming apart. Okay, we’re in the final stretch here, Garry. Hang on, man. We appreciate everyone’s great participation. Please keep the questions coming. And we’ll get to the remainder of these questions at the end here. So let’s jump back into the design of HDPE. Garry, let’s first start off with maybe how to properly specify and call out for some of this stuff. We’ve we go on in great lengths to make sure that specifications are up to date. So the projects are getting the best products, the right products in time, essentially for it for the project. So what are some of the standards that we’d like to call out and reference to?

Garry 

Well, you know, we start with the raw materials that make up the HDPE pipe, right? The resin so ASTM 3350 is the primary resin. But then you can see here, I don’t I’m not going to bore them with all the all the numbers, they can read those will. But you can see we’ve got specifications for the diameter of the pipe, the actual pipe itself, the materials, molded fittings, fabricated fittings, there’s a WWE standards, you know, median application standards, there’s one for if you’re doing gas, right, D 2513. So depending on all the factors that are going into it, there’s probably a standard that particularly applies to that application.

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. And I bet for anybody out there that’s looking for an updated version of a specification, we just did that. I just did that. So I think if you asked me or David or actually better yet, email insights at ISCO dash pipe.com asking for one of those, we can get you an updated copy of the latest and greatest in terms of, of standards and specifications. We do touch touch on this quite frequently, Garry. So HDPE cell classification, we’re seeing typically 445574 C, I like to brag because it’s about the only number I’d memorize. Tell us a little bit about what each one of those digits means. Right?

Garry 

You know, at the beginning of this Well, we talked about different resins, you know, 3608 4710 Well, they all mean something, it’s part of that whole cell classification number that you just rattled off. And as the residents have improved, so has the cell classification, the the density of the material, that’s what that four stands for. It was a three now, you know, and now it’s a four. Yep, well, 15 years ago, it moved to a four. The seven is the slow crack growth. resistance, we talked about how that’s improved as the residents have improved. And, you know, back in earlier days, it was a either a four, or a six, right? That’s the the amount of time that that sample has to be put a notch in, it’s called the pin test, they put a notch in it, they submerse it in material waiting for it to fail, it has to hold 500 hours now, we’re only used to be 100 hours on that test. So that’s the seventh classification. And then the last two digits will the 10 is the HDS. Hydrostatic design stress, it’s 1000 psi now used to be 800 psi.

Will Vodak 

So again, the bottom line, all those numbers do mean something and they’re all backed up by testing. So please make sure to, you know, consult with with, you know, what’s going to work out well, definitely not me, maybe Garry, if you ask me, I’m probably gonna ask Timmy. So please consult with us about maybe the best pipe to specify and for your project. There are a couple of different types of HTTP in terms of testing classes and ratings. So let’s touch base on what’s going to work best for you and your project, we can share what we see most often, we kind of touched on this a little earlier, Garry, but here’s some good examples of what the striping looks like. We’ve got blue, you know, I bet you if you asked for a certain shade, we can even try to throw like getting we can accomplish a certain shade. But bottom line is striping can can distinguish services pretty regularly. Moving on to fabricated fittings, we love this topic. We love supporting our projects through the use of fabricated fittings. Once you tell us a little bit about F 2206, why we need to D rate and what people should ask in their projects for fabricated 90s 45 tees in particular, right.

Garry 

So when we get into fabricated fittings, anything with a miter is going to have a pressure reduction. So we talked about HDPE pipe being Dr. Levin rated at 200 psi, if we made an fabricated 90 or 45 out of that same Dr. 11 pipe, it would have a derating of about 25% of the pressure capacity from the 200. So that fitting by itself would meet the same pressure rating that the pipe is operating under. So with 20 tools six is basically as a testing, we’ll get in one of those testing parameters that the fitting has to meet a certain pressure. Well, in order to do that, to meet the same pressure rating of the pipe that it’s joining to that pipe is common or that fitting is commonly made with a one Dr. Thicker, material feedstock to make that elbow. But when we have that, right, it can be a little confusing for everybody, everybody out there trying to figure out well, what what fitting do I need Dr. wise to Matt. So part of 2206 also requires that you reference an EDR equivalent dimensional ratio. So an EDR 11 fitting, if you see that on a fitting, then you know that that fitting can be joined to Dr. Levin pipe and meet the same pressure rating of that pipe, right.

Will Vodak 

And a lot of times some of these, these these ends are beveled out to make sure you can specify that to make sure that the hours are matching up. Some standards

Garry 

require that that’s, that’s necessary just for the Fusion joining, they want the ends of the fitting to match the same dimension as the pipe, right.

Will Vodak 

But you can, as you said earlier, fuse one Dr difference in materials and still be within the standard. It’s really important to note this during the specification process when you’re going out for bid. So that you’re just getting an accurate understanding of who’s doing what, and making sure that the fittings you are getting are going to work for your system. You know, if you need an ID controlled piping material, with with, you know, a heavier beefed up 90, we can do that we can actually add on to the exterior of that fitting, rather than the interior that fittings provide us some more support. So please just make sure to specify which pressure rating is needed for those fittings. Or you know if a reduction in the ID is going to be a problem.

Garry 

Yeah, really. It’s just your if you identify your piping system and pressure rating that you want parameters, your design pressures, we can help determine exactly what fittings and goes with what pipe Absolutely.

Will Vodak 

So let’s continue on here with some pipe performance. Here’s some really good topics that I know everybody loves to talk about because it’s it’s coming up constantly. Garry has been preaching to me been here at ISCO for about five years now Garry has been smacking me over the head with 110 101 10 100 Once you tell me about what that means, Garry in relation to other material that’s

Garry 

the thermal coefficient of expansion and contraction for HDPE pipe? Well, that 110 100. And that’s assuming you know, fully unrestrained pipe, right? For every the pipes gonna move one inch for every 10 degree delta for every 100 feet of pipe. Okay, so that sounds like a lot when you do the math to that will. Right? Somebody’s looking at that. Here’s an, here’s an example two inch Dr. 11 200 foot 40 degree temperature delta, you run that calculation, it looks like HCP pipes gonna move eight inches, and there might be some people in the audience. I gotta try to account for eight inches of movement on that pipe. Well, the good side of that, yeah, that sounds like a lot. But the force to restrain that eight inch movement is only 321 pounds, right? That is not a lot. It’s a couple piles of dirt on top of sandbag on the pipe, right to hold and restrain that movement. Now let’s compare that to what steel right? Tough, you know, durable pipe, right? Very good. All right, exactly. Same scenario, it’s only gonna move three fifths of an inch. So yeah, it’s very low thermal coefficient. But look at the energy, it’s required to restrain that free fist movement. It’s over 8000 pounds, right? So that’s why you see expansion loops on steel pipe and you don’t need them. Exactly.

Will Vodak 

So let’s say Garry, we do have to plan in for thermal expansion, or we’re going to actually talk about that in a little bit here. But Garry, let’s talk about everyone’s favorite topic, we got a question on it earlier, which is chlorine. A lot of misinformation has been put out there on, you know, HDPE and chlorine. Yes, we made some adjustments over the years, but we’re dealing with a different type of resin class now, that has added resistance to chlorine degradation, you want to talk about CC threes, right? I

Garry 

mean, that’s where we’re at now, will CC three that is the highest chlorine resistance classification. Right now for you know, the piping materials. And that’s where HDPE 4710 resin is, there have been changes in standard C 901. For your service, you know, three inch and down lines have all moved to there. And I’m using Dr. Nine thicker, thicker pipe to you know, account for some some things that had occurred in previous years. But polyethylene pipe itself is in that classification. As as chlorine resistant is anything that’s out there. Chlorine

Will Vodak 

will attack everything. It’s very, very severely, very, and

Garry 

you know, a lot of it depends on what disinfectant somebody’s using. Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, we’re very concentrated for the rights of chlorine. Right, right. So all those things come into play. But, you know, we’ve got plenty of information to share test data, to substantiate the claims that we have. And

Will Vodak 

some of the resources such as ppi and WWE do a great job of going into the science behind this in depth. Just so you know, if needed, specify a cc three into your into your pipe spec will make sure you get that in your pipe. So we’re gonna move through some of these, we’re running a little close up on time here. And I want to have some questions at the end. Direct Burial. We’ve spoke about this a little bit earlier on, but let’s talk more about kind of loading Earth loading, I like to just refer to the AW, wam 55 design window, using seven Dr. Seven through 21 and a certain amount, which basically says you’re going to be fine. Just stay within these. These ranges. You want to go over that a little

Garry 

bit. Yeah, I mean, you know, the biggest thing is we want to prevent the deflection, the buckling and the crushing that can occur on the pipe. So if you’re doing an open cut, you know, trying to figure out what Dr. Do you need? Maybe it’s not always just based on the working pressure, we have to take into account your burial depth, right? What’s your soil cover? Where’s your water table in that equation, and these are just some guidelines to help you reference them 55 That just got updated, I think about a year and a half ago. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty up to date. But if you’re doing Dr. Levin which is our most common pipe, you can see you know, see there if you’ve got h 20 loading you got semis highway traffic over the pipe, you want three foot minimum of cover, right? If you don’t have any H 20 You can get by with two foot foot right right. It’s really when we get into those thinner walls will you know those Dr. 26 is 3035 really dependent upon the bedding and backfill around that pipe to make sure we don’t get that scenario?

Will Vodak 

Absolutely. It’s still worth investigating and looking at and we can help guide people tap into points to those resources stay tuned to the end there’s some good information there as well. A post on effect airy, it once you go over this I mean essentially with the pipe pressurized it’s going to expand the contract a little bit.

Garry 

Exactly. That’s what polyethylene does. It’s what’s what’s the inherent properties of the material, why it can absorb those surge. stresses that get put on that pipe is it can expand and contract. But when that happens, and expands outwardly, you know, laterally, then longitudinally, it’s going to shrink, it’s gonna shorten. Right? So now we’re putting stresses, maybe on transition points, if we have a fully fused HDPE system will Nothing to worry, I’m not worried about it, because all we’re acting is one piece of pipe. Right. But this comes into play when we’re making connections to existing materials that are unrestrained. And I think the next slide Yeah, so

Will Vodak 

one might ask, How do I how do I, you know, prevent that from happening, or the exact methods that we have here, of which we get a lot of questions about both of these, right?

Garry 

So the first one is that energy is going to go somewhere, well, that’s on that pipe. Again, if it’s all polyethylene fuse together, I don’t have any worries. But when we have these scenarios, we have a weak link in the system. And the weak link is not the polyethylene, weak link is the under strain material joints, right? Ellen’s pick it up, right PVC, whatever the case may be. So we have to get that energy off the pipe system, we do that either with a thrust block, and you see here, or you, you can’t put a thrust block in, then you have to expose 234 joints downstream of the unrestrained and do a mega lug do some type of restraint device on those joints.

Will Vodak 

I really like using these wall anchors, we could also use flex restraints on these, but these prevent, essentially, the HDPE from moving out of the other materials. And it’s just such an easy way to do this. So, you know, talk to us about these, these are very common, stocked items that we believe, you know, can really help out with many of your design questions. You know, as I as I just said, this is what flexural strength look like, these wall anchors look like they’re built out of polyethylene. We had a question earlier about, you know, HDPE in concrete, this

Garry 

is the best way to go about doing absolutely, you know, you got to have something to anchor because concrete directly on polyethylene doesn’t, doesn’t hold. It doesn’t restrain, sir, yeah, those

Will Vodak 

flexor strains are very easy. They can be put around at different patterns, each rated for about 1000 pounds of axial strength, and force wall anchors, very similar, those are more fused in line with the system. So depending on size, depending on budget, depending on a whole lot of things, this is how you would in case HDPE in thrusts blocks.

Garry 

Now, since we’re talking about sir block, yeah, let’s go back to it, I just want to make sure that people understand when we put a polyethylene system in, if you’re used to putting thrust blocks on your elbows, your direction, we don’t need any with polyethylene. If that elbow is fused in place, being a polyethylene elbow, you’re eliminated thrust blocks. Great,

Will Vodak 

absolutely fantastic point here. That’s why we keep you around above grade supports. We actually you and I ran into a question about this not too long ago, where someone had installed some HDPE. And it was sagging slightly. And it turns out, you know, wasn’t enough supports there, right? So do you want to talk to us about kind of, you know, it’s not going to impact the system per se, it’s, you know, it can, okay, yeah,

Garry 

it could impact the system. Well, if you don’t support it properly, and you get a belly in the pipe, and let’s, so let’s say it’s a gravity line shirt, it’s going to Auto Show, well, I’m in forced me, type. But the main thing is polyethylene is flexible. It’s, it’s a great benefit of it. But it’s something you have to take into account if you want to keep the pipe in a certain place, and at a certain point, a line. And that requires support periodically, especially on suspended lines, so you don’t get that dip and sag. And also, you want to keep it in line, longitudinally, so or laterally, so it’s not sneaking around like a garden hose.

Will Vodak 

And we can provide some calculations. There’s some great calculators online that will go over exactly what you need or where this needs to be supportive. I will like to point out that this is what all of my job sites look like just an absolute perfect, beautiful outdoor

Garry 

structure a contractor words, they’re

Will Vodak 

really, really impressive. Well done. So we’re moving on now. We’ve made it through. We’re into our resources, Garry, so we still we know there’s still going to be questions. We know there’s probably a lot more. Our goal actually is that this presentation kind of starts more questions. I don’t see my name on the resources. It’s probably it’s probably an all these websites. TPI just lists you as the go to my bed. So Garry, a lot of the industry resorts that we’re involved with guys like Timmy that work with on a regular basis and in our tech team works with to sit on those committees and make sure that these you know these answers are are out there and published and the data can back it up. Where can people find some information if they want to dive a little deeper?

Garry 

I mean, I start with the PPI handbook. I mean, it is it is the HDPE, you know, pipeline Bible. I mean, it’s, you know, I refer to it on a regular basis, you can get the heart, you know, hardback version, or, you know, millennials like yourself who like everything electronically, right, you can download, download that, but it has a ton of information, all the support documents, all the calculations that somebody might need to help guide them through the, through the process. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

I mean, basically, everything you can find is in there, a WW A. And 55 also does a great job of explaining some of these details. The PE Alliance, Peter and his team do a fantastic job at going around, and educating on these types of events in person. So reach out to the PE Alliance, that’s p pipe.org. And then last, but certainly not least, I like to think is, is the ISCO catalog and fusion manual, which I think everybody in industry pretty much uses because it’s so comprehensive, and it’s got so much information in there. So we’d be happy to get you a copy of our catalog and fusion manual, which goes in depth on on all these items, you can find that and more at ISCO ISCO dash pipe.com. So a couple of other good resources here. We’ve got the HDPE app. Garry, we spent a lot of time on this, this is a nice little calculator that kind of spits out some equations for us,

Garry 

right? I mean, you talked about the support bracketing, right, we we will walk through that for that for that client of how much spacing he needs to have between his hanger support, right, so there’s a lot of information there. There’s directional drilling guidelines for the directional drilling contractor, or

Will Vodak 

loading, like expansion and contraction, anything that you know, and it’s a, it’s a, you know, put your variables in, and you’re gonna get, you know, and output. So another thing that we really like when considering the different options that are out there, Garry, we’ve got this pace calculator, which will let you know the performance of PVC, ductile iron and HDPE, side by side, the big three, to be able to, you know, share what is really going to be able to perform and what types of lifecycles they’re looking at, because that’s really what we’re here to do is talk about lifecycle,

Garry 

right? Especially they can put in their parameters, right exactly what their system is operating under. And you put that 100 year design life. And you’re pretty much going to find that both the both of the other materials are going to have some point of failure along before that 100 year design.

Will Vodak 

Garry, this is pretty remarkable. We’ve made it to the end. And there, Timmy and David have done such a good job at answering questions. We don’t have a single question to answer live. I mean, looks like 96 questions were answered today. And we only had to do a couple on air is fantastic.

Garry 

Guys, give it a big hand to those two guys.

Will Vodak 

Ultimately, that’s kind of a showing what ISCO is right? This is our this is our bread and butter. This is our every day. Everybody that works here is just as passionate as we are about HDPE and helping find new solutions to your projects and challenges over the course of you know, whatever project you’re looking for. So we rent equipment, we sell new equipment, we work with custom fabrication and custom structures. We’ve got you know, engineering and technical estimating staff, you know, to be able to assist with making sure that you guys are getting exactly what you’re looking for. So we hope that when the time comes for your next project with HDPE, or you’re just looking to take a look at what that might look like, you’ll reach out to ISCO. And we also hope you connect with us we’ve got a lot of great content like this. We’re in the content age, Garry, I’m sure we’re gonna have a Netflix show at some point. Heather, I’m hoping we can get on Hulu and Disney plus. So connect with us on all these various social media channels. And we’d be we’d be really able to assist you with whatever you’re looking for. So here, I think that’s it. Is there anything that we’re missing here? Is there anything you’d like to say from from your point of view to those out there, thinking about HDX?

Garry 

First of all, I want to thank everybody who joined us today? Well, you know, that record? I mean, this is our last one I make for the year it is, you know, December is tomorrow. And you know, we had our record crowd with the so I really appreciate everybody who’s interested in HDPE pipe and you know, we love polyethylene, we think it’s the best product and we we want to make sure every job every project goes goes well. So make sure you reach out to us if we can help in any way.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, and we’re actually going to be reaching out out to you. So our team will follow up with you to make sure you guys will get your PE PDH receipt, use your credits for attending today’s session. You guys need a catalog or a fusion manual, we’ll get you out there. If you need an in person office visits from one of our representatives, we’re going to come to you guys. So we’re going to make this as easy as possible. And you know, I really want to thank you for attending today’s session. Barry, can we get that email address up there? One last time? There we go. So please view us at ISCO-pipe.com for upcoming webinars as well as emailing us go insights@ISCO-pipe.com For any questions. So, on behalf of all of my colleagues here at ISCO industries, I’d like to thank you very much for joining Garry, Timmy Barrett. David, thank you very much for all your help today. And we really appreciate you spending some time with us learn more about HDPE everybody have a great year end and stay safe out there. And in the meantime, happy fusing. We’ll see you next time on ISCO insights