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Will Vodak 

Another edition of ISCO insights, my name is still will vote and we’re here live. From a huge studio downstairs. Don huge shout out to you and your team. For getting us ready for today, we got a great presentation today, I’d love to get going into the instructions and ways that you can interact with us. On this presentation, we have one of the coolest episodes we’ve ever done on this. So let’s get into a quick set of instructions before kicking this off. All your audio and video is turned off to enhance quality. So don’t worry if you’re sitting at home and sweatpants. We can’t see or hear you. And even better because the people that we have here today to talk with us are the real deal. For any feedback or troubleshooting with Zoom, please use the chat box, we will do our best to help you out. Zoom expert Heather is standing by ready to assist. And last but certainly not least, this one is going to be a little different. We’ve asked the audience to submit questions and answers or questions beforehand. We will do our best to get to any live questions. But I think if you follow us the whole time, you’ll see that any questions you have might be answered in a huge stack of questions that we have ready to roll and get answers by HDPE experts. So with with that, I’ll begin to dive into our our HDPE panel of experts. Plus Garry Bouvet. Let’s go ahead and start with my colleague, my colleague friend, Garry Bouvet, Garry, who are you? And why should people listen to you?

Garry 

Obviously, I’m the whipping boy for everybody else at ISCO. But, again, for those who don’t know, Garry Bouvet with ISCO industries, have been in HDPE business almost 30 years been with ISCO 26 years in a wide variety of roles. And I am super excited to have our great friends with us today. Well so let’s let’s see who we got with us today. So

Will Vodak 

in the past I think we’ve learned from these individuals, more so than anybody one of them being Timmy Tipton, technical, technical director of this go industries, Timmy, welcome back to the program. You’ve been on here what now? Two or three times.

Timmy Tipton 

Almost half a dozen.

Will Vodak 

Sweet that’s even better. Who are you watching people listen to

Timmy Tipton 

Timmy Tipton technical director at ISCO. I have been in polyethylene for the better part of 17 years and done all sorts of fun stuff.

Will Vodak 

I to me, I think you’re the only guy that’s read the PPI handbook back to front multiple times. I don’t know. Tell us what that was like.

Timmy Tipton 

Exhilarating.

Will Vodak 

Perfect. And next week, we brought some out of town guests. One being dusty Langston, VP of engineering over at WL plastics. Dusty. Welcome back to the program you were on in the early days. Right?

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, done a lot of the insights. I don’t think I’ve had six but at least three or

Will Vodak 

four. Yeah. So welcome back. Who are you? Why should people listen to you today? So dusty Langston,

Dustin Langston 

VP of engineering quality assurance for wo plastics 18 years, so I beat you barely? Not even close to 30 though. Plastics, again, many different jobs within the company. Very excited to be here.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, we’re gonna be relying on you a lot. Last but certainly not least dear friend of mine, the queen of HDPE. Holly lenke. Coming all the way from Colorado. Holly, welcome to the program for your first time. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here. Who are you? And why should people listen to you?

Holly Link 

I’m Holly link. I am with global underground Corporation in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Formerly with Colorado Springs Utilities, and I have been dealing with HDPE pipes since 2004. So almost 20 years long time. Yeah. And it was important to me to teach people to how to use it and why to use it and how to connect it to your system.

Will Vodak 

We can’t thank you enough for being here. You’re an early adopter of HDPE. And so I think with this panel of experts, we can touch on virtually every facet of the industry, from from sales with good with Garry, through kind of production, technical services through Timmy engineering through dusty and actually the ownership, you know, the case studies the usage by the client themselves with Holly. So we’ve got a lot to cover today. And with that, here’s how this is going to work. I’m gonna go ahead and introduce H question. We have asked the audience to submit a ton of questions, we’ve done our best to pick the best ones, maybe combine them. If we don’t get to your question today, there will be a subsequent podcast that comes out with all the remainder questions that we are not able to get to today. So please go ahead and submit the q&a that you have to the Zoom link and we’ll be able to answer those at a later date as well with our team of sales experts that will be in touch with you after the fact but we’ve got a lot to cover today. I’m gonna go ahead and read out the question. Let’s keep this conversational and see where it goes and have some fun. So Garry, let’s start off where The name ISCO come from?

Garry 

Very good question. Well ISCO started as irrigation supply company back in 1967, with our founder Jim Kirchdorfer. For and he had an irrigation business. And that’s where we started up back at the hardware store of his father’s company in downtown Louisville, and has blossomed over the years into what we now know Will is scope. And it is all things HDPE. Pipe, that thermal plastics, that is our core business, everything we do starts and ends with HDPE. But and

Will Vodak 

that’s it for ISCO insights. So let’s talk about the real hard hitting stuff. And maybe Holly and Timmy, you guys can take a stab at this. Holly first, what are the circumstances that HDPE fails? And how do you repair damaged? HDPE? That’s a question we often get, which is I love the idea of using HDPE really concerned though that we install it and then there’s a failure. And I’ve got a group of group of maintenance staff or or contractors in the area that aren’t as familiar with it. Right? How would you respond to that question?

Holly Link 

Well, first of all, the biggest thing that you need to do with HDPE is to make sure that everybody is trained and install the HDPE properly. There are many, many different organizations out there that have information for free on how to do repairs, and that sort of thing. When it when it fails, which is very rare. But sometimes things do fail, I have to tell you, we had a coupling electrofusion coupling that was installed, and it was one of the first initial ones and early 2000s That was installed and had failed. That thing held for 10 years. 10 years, and then it failed. But we had it destructively tested it to find out what happened and why the coupling actually failed. And it was installation error. It really was when they took it apart, you could see where there was still dirt in the electrofusion. area. But beginning you know, a lot of people didn’t know how, how to properly prepare things completely. For training, yeah, right training. So training, that’s what we go with now training, but it can be repaired, there’s several different ways that you can repair it once it fails. And the municipal advisory board part of epi Institute is even put out a booklet on how to repair your HDPE pipe if it fails. Fusion is the first best application to do. But if you can’t there is also a section in the in here that goes into mechanical couplings and how you can use it

Will Vodak 

right. So just like you would repair other pipe materials.

Holly Link 

And these things are free. So 70 before

Will Vodak 

so was was failure a common issue? I mean, did did suddenly joints just start falling apart? Or was there maybe something else at play there?

Holly Link 

No. A lot of it really didn’t fail. The biggest thing worry is third party damage. Because somebody doesn’t know that the pipe is there. And they don’t think that anything is there. Now with national regulations of having to put in tracer wire with all underground utilities, it’ll help alleviate some of that. But that is our biggest worry always is third party damage. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

we’re gonna probably come to repair a couple of different times today. To me, there’s a lot of products out there for repair. I mean, you can do, as Holly said, fusion, you can do a mechanical coupling, flange repair, how do you look at determining what is the best case for that particular damage? In

Timmy Tipton 

a lot of instances is going to be what what what do you need to get your line back up and running? Right? So it’s how long can it be down? So when if it can’t be down very long, you’re gonna go to go towards a temporary style repair mechanical sleeve, something of that nature, and then got a plan on when you can come back and repair it with a permanent solution or more permanent solution in a fused option in particular. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

we It looks like we have a little technical troubleshooting going on here. So we’ll move on to the next question. What are the various methods of tapping HDPE pipe especially for water services dusty wants you maybe take a swing at that one?

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, and this really comes down to what you’re tapping and you know, if it’s a polyethylene complete system, you can have a self tapping style, where it will create your service line to polyethylene that As the best case scenario, polyethylene main polyethylene service, if you have a ductile iron pipe with maybe some kind of a strap on style tie in, then it’s going to be a little bit different. We also have options to go from polyethylene main to a copper service. So really, we have every part out there every fitting that you would need to tap HDPE pipe we have available.

Will Vodak 

What did you use? Did you end up using a lot of sidewall fusion saddles? Yes,

Holly Link 

that’s what we use. We used always a sidewall fusion that had a corporation of copper or brass corpse on insert. And so you could screw the corporation right into that so you take off with your copper pipe or HP.

Dustin Langston 

As far as the industrial setting, not even just me missable. All of our plants are plumbed completely with polyethylene pipe. And so all those are electro fusion. And we’re friends as well. So we can go off with, you know, a stainless steel nipple or something like that to a hose to feed a tank, or what are we going to industrial?

Will Vodak 

Sure, carry some down. Yeah,

Garry 

and then my experience, my previous world, with tapping equipment, on the steel and ductile iron side, a lot of that same equipment will will tap HDPE, as well, as long as you’ve got the right fittings, and obviously, the properly sized, you know, cutting tools that you’re using, but many of those can work as well. So there is a variety, really options depending on size and scope of the tap that you’re trying to perform.

Will Vodak 

We’re talking about tapping here, Holly, I want to just come back to this, I’m sure you are a big believer that you’re using HDPE. One of the main benefits is fusion and the fusible qualities of having a leak free monolithic system. Did you ever consider mechanical saddles, or are there you know, maybe bolt on connections for various laterals and services?

Holly Link 

We did try some but we found that they weren’t good in our area, because we have a lot of land or movement, ground movement, and a lot of temperature fluctuation. So with that it the mechanical tapping saddles weren’t good for us. So we always had to use a sidewall fusion. Sure, we used it more than electrofusion. Because we in the very beginning electrofusion didn’t work for us. And it wasn’t rated to our pressures, we have very high pressures where I live, it’s 250 psi working pressure. So at the time that things weren’t developed that far they are now and because we kept asking, but but we always use a sidewall fusion and then took off with a surface line from there, either copper or HDPE. We like to put newer materials on the ground, right.

Will Vodak 

Garry, maybe dusty as well, let’s talk about how does the cost of HDPE compare to other solutions right now? No, we don’t want to maybe say hey, the cost of eight inch Dr. 11. Is this right now? It changes does you want to talk maybe about how pricing fluctuates throughout the year. And then Garry, maybe you can talk about versus other materials. Yeah.

Dustin Langston 

So ECP pipe is made from natural gas. So anytime you see natural gas prices fluctuate, that’s going to be a direct tie in to HDPE pipe fluctuation in price. But as of right now, usually the least expensive material out there compared to you know, ductile iron, PVC and other things. So

Will Vodak 

we are commonly asked, gas is doing this, it’s going up or down. Why isn’t HDPE going? I mean, there’s a direct correlation. And so

Dustin Langston 

gas, especially oil, gas, diesel, those are completely separate. And again, it’s that natural gas side of things. But there’s a lot of other factors that play into it as well. It’s not just a direct correlation there, labor,

Will Vodak 

freight conversion equipment, all that. So, Garry, you want to talk about HDPE versus other materials over the last couple of years. Pricing has been so favorable on polyethylene that has forced some projects into adopting this not newer product, but you know, it’s maybe newer to them. You want to talk about how it compares to other materials. Yeah,

Garry 

well, and you deal with it on a on a daily basis as well and your role but you know, we have ACPs been very favorable. And not always necessarily from a pricing standpoint, as much as even an availability issue. Right. Some of those other materials are the lead times are so astronomically long, that HDPE becomes very, very attractive in that situation. But it’s not just the price of the pipe or the per foot price of the material. When we look at an ACPE job in a project. It’s really about the total installation costs, everything from all the fittings, the other things that have to go into that the joint, you know, the the installation methods, all those things pulling in are we doing a a trenchless application, which can really minimize your excavation costs and your downtime. You’re in there’s even cost that aren’t tied necessarily to $1. But just the inconvenience cost to your citizens and in the people around. So there’s a lot of things that I think that really need to be taken into consideration. And HDPE is going to look very attractive than in most of those instances.

Will Vodak 

How were your How are your budgets affected early on with HDPE? Later on? Did you find that it was a cost comparable or favorable material? Were you more looking at the longevity of the product? Or was it a combination of both?

Holly Link 

The cost in the beginning wasn’t, it wasn’t more cost effective. And plus, there was additional time, because learning training, and that kind of thing in the beginning, and which is a lot of pushback with a lot of people. But once you have the training and the familiarity with it, then it wasn’t in there. And when prices started to fluctuate and come down more than HDPE was more viable. We used it primarily in areas that where we needed to either high pressure and high corrosion, landslide areas. And if we had to bore under Creek, you know, or across the highway or anything like that, we always used it in those instances.

Garry 

So the hard stuff hard, the hardest job. Alright,

Holly Link 

step we did that? Well,

Dustin Langston 

you touched on something else, that’s super important. When you get into a city, we’ve seen adoption now across the whole country. And it’s the exact same cycle with everybody, it initially starts higher price, because the contractor does not install it during training, they don’t understand. And they’re going to put a good buffer in there to make sure that, hey, if something happens, that we’re not even aware of, we’re going to be okay. And then the more contractors that can train in an area, that price just starts to plummet, because everybody knows how easy it is to work with.

Will Vodak 

Phantom, and then the lifecycle cost, I mean, just, you know, for the duration of the product, I mean, we’re installing things now that we’re hoping not hoping that are gonna last 100 plus years, today,

Holly Link 

everything all of our legacy pipes are, are at their life, you know, they’re all starting to fail everywhere, everywhere. And it’s not only pipe his bridges and everything else, and in something we didn’t realize that corrosion was going to do to us, you know, so bad. Six years ago, you know, and so now, using HDPE, you have that 100 year life, and look how long you can go before you have to do anything, or maybe never, you know, dusty,

Will Vodak 

you’ve seen some testing on day 101 that pipe just gonna disintegrate

Dustin Langston 

you mean day or year.

Will Vodak 

200 days

Dustin Langston 

apart. One of our questions, I love talking about failure methods of all pipe materials. And when it comes to polyethylene, that 100 years is so conservative, just incredibly concerned. Right? You know, the the slow crack growth resistance is really what we worried about back in the day with the old 36 materials. And even back then, you know, 50 year design life was you know, pretty piece of cake to hit. And now the test results we have for what’s called pants, it’s Pennsylvania notch test is 100 times better than those older materials. And so what’s going on there and saying, you know, 100 year design life is pretty conservative. But no, it will not just crumble into dust at 101 years. When it gets to that point of failure. You get like pinhole leaks, small slit crack failures, that are pretty simple to repair. But again, we’re we’re so past that 100 years. Yeah, but it’s just it’s not gonna be any of our lifetimes.

Garry 

And talk and speaking on that. And there was a test. I believe that was done. After the 10,000 cycle test on the ACP.

Dustin Langston 

Oh, that was on the fatigue side. Yeah, so yeah, slow crack growth of fatigue are completely separate topics. And fatigue really isn’t even a design consideration for polyethylene. polyethylene pipe is a giant shock absorber, you know, fatigue doesn’t actually hurt it, it just expands and contracts. thousandths of an inch. It’s very slightly, but expensive contracts with water serves other things. So fatigue is not a failure method for polyethylene at all. Where it’s definitely consideration for other pipe materials.

Will Vodak 

And we’ll touch on fatigue a little later on. Let’s keep moving down this list of questions. We’ve only got I don’t know 800 More

Garry 

great way to get your popcorn.

Will Vodak 

That’s a great point. Timmy once you take us through the process of pressure testing HDP what does that look like? I know there’s a lot of information out there. We could probably spend a whole day talking about a sir but there’s some maybe guidelines grab this is the is there a cue card here? Grab a pen and paper it’s about to get real here. Timmy,

Timmy Tipton 

I’m gonna keep it brief. Okay, please. We recommend following hydrostatic testing procedures ASTM F 2164 In particular, right. So always start with water. Don’t move to air unless you absolutely have to. Okay, um, there’s some ASTM F 20 164 is hydrostatic testing procedures. If you get into to air, there’s a couple of them out there. One of them is a low pressure test. ASTM F 1417. Alright,

Dustin Langston 

for same PVC, same standard. Yep.

Timmy Tipton 

So essentially always push people to begin to investigate the standard. For the most part, we follow the exact same standards as PVC does,

Will Vodak 

okay? And maybe a little different, maybe you’re pumping it up letting you relax. I mean, it’s a little bit more expansive. So you know, it is going to lose some pressure as it relaxes into into that pressure range.

Timmy Tipton 

We have a slight over I wouldn’t even call it an over pressurization. But it’s, but we’re pumping up a little bit more than what our test pressure is letting it relax and then dropping it into our test pressure.

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, it’s we’re talking five psi. So it’s not a huge amount of pressure, right? But you do you do that for about an hour and make up water, maintain that pressure for that hour backing off the five psi, start your test. And that thing’s just gonna be steady. It’s wrong. There’s no makeup water, there’s no water leakage allowed for polyethylene, right?

Will Vodak 

It’s just zero from day one. You were following that exact procedure to the tooth and nail row, right? Tell me how you guys did your pressure testing? Well,

Holly Link 

what we did is once we had fused everything in and had installed it and had buried it, let it set, you know, at least 24 hours before we filled it. And when we filled it, because our pressures were so high, much higher than most people that we filled it and then we watched it. And if nothing leaked, we knew we weren’t good because our with our high pressures that had to hold, there was just no other option.

Will Vodak 

So you took it up to the 250 or whatever that might have been left it there. And if it didn’t drop too much, you were you were confident in that system,

Holly Link 

whatever the working pressure net area was great. Great.

Will Vodak 

Yeah, this is gonna be a tough one. How was HDPE? Manufactured? Can we do we have anybody here? Well,

Garry 

we need to find somebody.

Will Vodak 

So what we know I’m getting dusty. Go ahead. Again, WL is is one of the largest pipe manufacturers in the United States, one of the oldest as well. Yeah. medium density and high density. Yeah, definitely tell us how HDPE is manufactured maybe from, you know, oil fields all the way to to John’s

Dustin Langston 

gonna bring that up because we had a webinar or actually in person, a seminar that we did last week in Texas. And we got asked that question like, hey, how American made is your product? I love that question. Yeah, we are the most American made product. And then even being in Texas, we are Texas made product, we’re coming from, you know, natural gas manufactured or produced here in North America. And then that’s going into the Gulf, you know, Houston area and being made into high density polyethylene. So we are very American made we are very Texas made to. So that’s where the base materials come from that natural gas that’s put through what’s called the cracker. And it’s going to be broken down into ethylene gas, which is what we’re going to use as a building point for polyethylene that goes into a reactor, other co monomers are added to it all kinds of things. And it falls out of that reaction as like a snow, very similar to like a granule. Laundry detergent. That’s what raw polyethylene kind of looks and feels like. And then that gets pelletized. And that’s where we get it as a pipe manufacturer, I always have my microphone. As a pipe manufacturer, we get it as a natural base, and then a carbon additive to make the pipe black full UV rated for above ground storage and use. And that gets put into a giant extruder. And extruder is just a big corkscrew inside of a gun barrel. Like that’s the best and easiest way to explain what that setup looks like. Yeah, exactly. And it’s just pushed through melted mixed, make sure that Carbon Black is dispersed throughout the entire pipe. And it’s pushed out the end into whatever diameter pipe you’re looking for IPs, D IPs, copper tubing size, whatever size or der pressure class you’re looking for. And then it goes through a series of cooling tanks to make sure that we get it cooled down to the point where we have our dimensions of that pipe just perfect inspect to receive to be received by the customers.

Will Vodak 

I’m amazed every time I go to a pipe manufacturing facility. You’re expecting this, you know, chaotic, rambunctious place, right? You go there and it’s kind of boring. You’re watching, you’re watching plastic melt and come back together. And you guys do a great job. But the emissions, the cleanliness, it doesn’t smell like a you know, doesn’t smell like anything. I mean, it’s just a very clean process. One

Dustin Langston 

of my favorite things to talk about when we go into all these cities that we have plants with nine plants, now we’re building our tent, and we go into the cities and they come in and they’re like, all the buildings are very big compared to these other manufacturers in the towns. And we’re putting 20 truckloads of pipe out a day. So it’s very, very small footprint to be able to make all this high and just pushing it out the door. Yeah, so it is pretty crazy. But it’s very simple.

Holly Link 

It’s amazing. It’s like you said,

Will Vodak 

Yeah, well, I’m sure we’ll talk we could talk about that. All day long, we’ll talk about how fittings are made a little bit later on. Let’s keep going. How common are frozen HDPE lines? And how do you deal with them? Holly? How many times did you experience? I mean, you’re in Colorado, right winters, they’re a little chilly. What were your, your numbers of frozen lines that you encountered? Well,

Holly Link 

we didn’t really, on any main line, we didn’t encounter any at all. Because as long as there’s water flowing in it, it won’t. Yeah, it’s just like all your other pipes is not going to freeze. But the only issue is in our area and high mountain areas is anything that’s exposed, you know, and it’s going to freeze and get cold. The only thing is, is that you can’t put electric city to it, like copper pipes and things like that to to thought so you have to be patient heaters a little way away from it. Yeah, watery blankets, pipe tape. Those kinds of things to thought I’ve even heard of steam where you can take as a steam hose and you could work it in there to stay on bought out all the way down.

Dustin Langston 

So did you ever have pipe break, though? From freeze? Yeah.

Holly Link 

That’s a big question. Remember, Texas when they had all of that disaster, that freeze that went through there. And I that my whole thought that whole time is oh my god, if they only had all HDPE service lines and pipe in there, it wouldn’t have broken and ruined all of those apartment buildings. Yeah. So

Will Vodak 

you’re alluding to the fact I see that you can literally, I mean, this is a form of polyethylene here. This can be frozen, and it’s not going to rupture and expand the water bottle, it’s

Dustin Langston 

going to expand a little bit. Yes, ice is something like 6% expansion. Sure. And the pipe can absolutely handle that that’s well within its strain allowance. So the pipe will literally swell with the expanding ice and it doesn’t hurt the pipe at all. Once it goes back to its original size. The pipe shrinks back down. Yeah. And you’re you’re good to go. Garry. Yeah,

Garry 

well, we see that another form of our business, which is a golf course, irrigation. We’ve seen a lot of golf courses now have transitioned to HDPE pipe for that very reason, right? They’ve got to drain their water systems out in the fall before they freeze and with the PVC materials with it freezes in there, you know what happens in the spring? Right? You see that you see a new pond formed on you know, fairway number three, because the the whole line is as cracked and split and polyethylene going in? It’s not an issue. You’re

Will Vodak 

pretty familiar with the ponds on fairways? Garry, you know, talk about maybe, and you’ve been involved with this a little bit, too, is the insulation value of HDPE. Right, I think a lot of people are under the impression that, you know, it’s it’s maybe somewhat more susceptible to the heat or the temperatures outside of it. Really not the case. I mean, the the insulating value of that product itself is quite high

Garry 

is very good. And I don’t know the specific R value, I think Dustin probably can help me out with that one. But polyethylene itself is not a good conductor of heat or temperature in general. So you know, speaking on heat, if one section of polyethylene gets hot, it takes a long time, it’s not instantaneous on that pipe system, it takes a lot of time for that to transfer and even, you know, polyethylene pipe surface temperature, I’ve I’ve measured pipe at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, on the surface being a black pipe, absorbing all that UV and inside the pipe, it’s substantially lower. Big just because it does not conduct that heat at all. Absolutely. So again, a very tolerant pipe, we’re talking right from minus 40, all the way up to 140 degrees for standard HDPE pipe, and we’ll

Will Vodak 

touch on temperatures a little bit more coming up. Let’s go next to Timmy. Can you please share some types of trenchless installation methods and how they work?

Timmy Tipton 

So we’ve got a handful of them, right. So you start with slip lining, which is sliding a pipe inside of a pipe. So you have a hose pipe and then you pull your polyethylene pipe through. And a lot of times that’s going to be used in your gravity flow applications, things that you can use the meanings number within polyethylene to downsize your pipes, right and keep the same flow. You’ve got your horizontal directional drilling or directional drilling, which was probably what from the early 1980s. Polyethylene should have been designed specifically for this. And it took us a while to figure out where we’re good.

Dustin Langston 

Now some majority international drills Yeah, conduit gas lines.

Timmy Tipton 

I mean, everyday, right? Yep. And then you’ve got your pipe bursting, which is probably my favorite portion of it. We’re replacing so much aging infrastructure, and we’re able to leave the existing infrastructure in place and pull in new policies

Dustin Langston 

rather than larger pipes. That was,

Garry 

well we’re not really We leave it in place, we’re breaking it up, leaving it into soil,

Timmy Tipton 

soil, fracturing it. And then you’ve got your your swedge, lining. Fit, and compression fits pretty cool as well. But you know, you’re taking your existing hose pipe, and instead of leaving in annular space or a gap, you end up compressing the polyethylene pipe through a compression sleeve or a dye. And then you pull it all the way through, and then it expands or whatever, 24 or 48 hours after that fits, fits and clears the makes it where there’s no annular space gap.

Dustin Langston 

It’s a grouting don’t. Like, yeah, tight fit liners are awesome. Pretty,

Will Vodak 

pretty crazy. solution there. Garry, why would somebody lean towards a trenchless? No, it’s not. No. Trench. Trench less? Yep. Less trench insulation method. Very

Garry 

good. Yeah, a lot of that will is just, you know, we talked about touched on it earlier. It’s that inconvenience, right, or that the cost associated with tearing up a street or a road. You know, when you’re talking about pipe bursting, you know, when you can break that up and only have an entry pit and an exit pit, versus tearing up the entire street, you’re talking about directional drilling, same thing, an entry and an exit pit, going under an obstruction upon the lake river or whatever the case may be, and not having to disrupt anything else. People don’t even know it goat, the work has been done. Right. So there’s just a lot of benefits. And there is a cost a substantial cost savings by doing those trenchless methods. I’ve seen numbers anywhere from 20 to 40%. savings over standard open traditional local cutting methods. Yeah,

Dustin Langston 

especially for those contractors get trained in it. City of Knoxville city of Houston, Los Angeles, these guys are putting in 10s of 1000s of feet every week of pipe burst. And that’s when the costs are in the plumbing. Absolutely.

Holly Link 

And going under rivers and under Major Highways, you know, your major interstates you just can’t cut that the state’s not gonna let you do that open trench to an interstate. Right. Right, which is what we do all the time. So we’re the ones who are doing all that drilling, you know,

Will Vodak 

one of the premier trenchless contractors in the country guys do a great job with that.

Garry 

And if there’s another pipe a C pipe that we haven’t even touched on, right, if you dig and take that out of the ground, you’ve got a whole different disposal considerations that exasperate your cost methods, right. So if we can go in and pipe burst or slip line, depending on the application, and leave that in the ground, huge, huge advantage.

Holly Link 

Gotta remember though, you need to check with your state because our state doesn’t allow allow that. Yeah. Yeah, just for AC pipe. Yeah. So but a lot of states are starting to come around to allowing that.

Will Vodak 

Let’s move on to how extensive is construction of and applications of special fittings like HDPE, manholes, and vaults? Timmy I can think of no better person to talk about. Today, maybe let’s start with HDPE fittings at large and then go into the specialty products.

Timmy Tipton 

So we have we have tremendous amount of HDPE fitting options, right standard fitting many fitting off way where we can essentially if you can draw it, we can build it right. So you get into standard fittings for pressure applications, elbows, tees, laterals, reducers, flanges, whatever it might be, right, we have we have, we have tremendous amount of capacity within the industry to make these. Then we also have custom fittings and structures, and then an ISCO. We have 10 manufacturing facilities that handle custom fittings and structures. So we may today we may have. I’m trying to think of a great application

Will Vodak 

building actually, today we’re about to ship 132 inch by 120 inch dual containment. Right, yeah. Enormous.

Timmy Tipton 

Right, right. So you know, some of that’s used in landfill applications. But essentially, the construction on a a custom structure or a manhole, it can be fairly extensive. It can take a shop or a couple guys hundreds of hours to get some of these complete, right. So and then we have other custom fittings that may take only a few hours, right. So it really just varies upon the difficulty of what we’re trying to do for our customers in applications.

Will Vodak 

And I still think you probably run into and this kind of, there’s a question here about an energy dissipated, those are becoming more common as blocky laters I mean, you so many different types. We really probably haven’t seen the end of what HCP can be used for in terms of a structural

Timmy Tipton 

I’ve got occasion We’ve got customers that are sending stuff almost daily on things that we’ve never seen before. Yeah. Oh, hey, can you build this app?

Garry 

Did you say flux capacitor?

Will Vodak 

Yes. So, I mean, the bottom line is, I think the it’s just quite extensive. The construction of applications of manholes, vaults, fittings, you know, I somebody the other day said, the HDP industries standard is custom fabrication. Very easy. That’s perfect. And then you want to talk about there’s that there’s a very direct question here about Andrew D. dissipators. Yeah. Have you seen these pop up

Timmy Tipton 

little? Yeah, we’ve been we’ve been getting more and more into them, right. Essentially just throws the design, we’ll take a look at it and figure out what we can do

Will Vodak 

great CSN drawings in and we can go can take a look at those. Here’s a great question. We’re all going to chime in on this one. What are the backfill and loading requirements of HDPE pipe? Are there compaction recommendations to avoid crushing or damaging the pipe? Dusty once you start off telling us about the design window within a WwM 55? Yep,

Dustin Langston 

so the very first thing, ASTM standards for burial on pressure pipe or on gravity sewer pipe are the same barrel ASTM standards like that’s the first thing get out of the way. One more time, yeah, PVC and polyethylene using the same ASTM standards. Now when it goes to m 55. That’s an American waterworks design consideration design manual, and it has what’s called the design window. So this is anything Dr. 21, or thicker, with two feet of burial at least is predesigned. Window, you don’t need to worry about calculating all that. If it’s an H 20. live load with pavement, that needs to be a three foot barrier.

Will Vodak 

Let’s break this down a little slower. So two feet, two feet burial. I just want to stress this because it’s very we think we get this question. All the tiles are Dr. One and thicker. Yep. Dr. 21. So if you’ve got a Dr. 21, pipe, TSI. Right Dr. 17 Dr. Nine in your case, are thicker, and it’s more than two feet burial.

Dustin Langston 

Yep, you’re good to go. Okay, that’s using a Solium modulus for the 1000 1000 psi great, which is super easy to get to write class one class two class 390 5% compaction, and you hit that number piece of cake, right? So that all that works all done for you. If you want to go above that you want to go super deep burial, you want to go 100 feet burial. This is not something that’s out of the ordinary. Several 100 feet mining several 100 feet burial. There’s calculations in the plastic pipe Institute, Chapter Six there P handbook. We’ll go over shallow burial too. I had one just the other day, hey, we have a job site, this eight inch 11 lines already been buried, but it’s only six inches of cover. And we got 80 ton haul trucks going over this thing? Are we okay? That chapter will help you design those calculations. So you can figure that out. So that’s the great resource for it, where you want to go that chapter six.

Will Vodak 

Holly, did you guys use native backfill? That’s a common question that we get native soils in your backfill?

Holly Link 

Yes, yeah. So a lot of times sometimes, you know, we use preferred backfill, you know, a little bit of sand and sometimes we didn’t use crushed rock because you don’t really want to use that around but native soil is good. Sometimes we just use cleaner soil that was easier compacted you just want to make sure you don’t have sharp rocks and stuff sticking into your pipe and and that kind of thing was called Yeah, point loads, right. But you want to you just compacted the same that you do with other pipes and put it in the ground. So

Will Vodak 

let’s maybe states and design resources for the audience. They can jot down right now and visit a little later. For more information about this. Aw wa N 55 is one of them. PPI Chapter Six is another section. There’s some design calculations online. The H the PPI HDPE pipe app is a good one. Where else can they go dusty.

Dustin Langston 

There’s Amster. Howard’s book. He’s actually got the second version out now for pipeline design. And he’s by far one of my favorite humans in this whole industry. He is so good. And his big thing he’s pushing right now is you don’t compact, just six inches on top of a pipe, especially HDPE pipe HDPE pipe is very flexible. And so if you get a like a vibrating compactor on top of that thing, it’s going to want to bounce around unless you have some substantial cover over it first. So compacting the hunches, Crownline all that is a little different. But once you get to the top of the pile, you need to make sure you have some cover on top of that before you start compacting, interesting start bouncing. He cares about it more because it’s concrete pipes and things like that you can actually crack and you’ll wind up hurting the pipe during compaction or as you’re not going to hurt but you’re definitely going to get that thing bouncing and moving.

Will Vodak 

Another common question we get I think it’s a little later on but this sounds like a great place to talk about it is h 20 loading. So if you need you know heavy highway traffic, heavy machinery traffic in mining applications, those machines are enormous. How would you go about protecting that HDPE pipe from buckling dust You want to take that?

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, the simple way is m 55. design window, it’s three feet of burial. So as long as again, you hit that 1000 psi soil modulus three feet of burial, you’re good with age 20 lungs concrete, if you start getting into super heavy equipment, then you start getting past that age 20 into, you know, haul equipment and things like that. But that’s

Timmy Tipton 

at 85. What’s your train load training? We do that with snap. Absolutely, we do. Airport loading, which is also extensive area, we do that on a normal basis as well.

Dustin Langston 

All those equations to calculate that same chapter six PPI handbook, all the data is there. Yeah, it’s perfect all the tables. So

Will Vodak 

we’re just going to show dusty and Timmies cell phones at the end of your equations and go from there. Let’s let’s stay here on on this trench topic here. You want to talk about maybe trench standard trench details, dusty trench wits that you might run into, I get a lot of questions about dual pipes, sometimes in the same trench. What are some considerations to take there?

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, Europe actually puts all three in the same trench. And we’re not quite there in North America yet, but they’ll put water right next to sewer right next to gas in one trench because it’s all leak free. So you have to worry about having them separated by so much distance. makes too much sense, right. So if you have multiple pipe in a trench, you need to have at least six inches of separation. It really comes down to what your compaction tools look like. They do make compaction tools that you can get down into the haunch areas, if you want to put them even closer. flobo Phil makes it the lot to worry about haunch compaction, so it really comes down to what your design is, but minimum six inches of separation between pipelines. And then same goes for trench with what have your pipe diameter is six inches on either side. Great.

Holly Link 

Do you though put a cover on the HDPE pipes before you put in flobo?

Dustin Langston 

depends. So if you wind up pouring it in lifts. So let’s say you only go up to the top of the haunch, then it’s not going to flow. And then you go up to the midline spring line, it’s not going to float, you try and pour that all at once you have to have something holding that pipe down. I also recommend filling the pipe with water. Now it might not matter, you might not to hold perfect to grade on like a pressure line. But if it’s a gravity line, you’re putting like super sack sandbags on the pipe every you know 1520 feet to hold it down. If you want to pour it in one lift. But if you’re not pouring that, if you’re pouring in several lifts, then you’re okay.

Holly Link 

So we required that there had to be a six inch layer of soil before you put in the flow. Oh, yeah. Nice. Yeah. So we’re protected the pipe a little bit. I

Will Vodak 

think that’s a great point. I mean, you took some steps, maybe in addition to what the recommended settings were here, every utility, every area is going to be slightly different. It might require some some ultimate design tweaks or considerations. So I mean, for you going out using Dr. Nine as your standard. At first, I heard that I was like, Man, that’s kind of overkill, and then realizing the slopes and the grades. Totally, totally, you know, unnecessary. So I think it’s important to note that, you know, we have some common practices here. But you know, it’s it’s there’s no one size fits all for really anything. Yeah.

Dustin Langston 

Especially sort of getting little states like Texas, you have the Texas Railroad Commission is completely different than anybody else in the country. Right. So it really does state to state

Will Vodak 

that you just mentioned gravity applications. Thank you for bringing that up. This is a huge topic we always get asked about, which is what about P pipes or gravity applications? Mainly? What about the ID bead? And this is such a such an interesting topic, because I think there’s a lot of opinions, data tests, best practices that you know, different situations, like we were just talking about, you’ve deviated everything on the gravity right on the line. So tell us what went into that approach and that design method

Holly Link 

mainly for flow. And also to keep anything from catching sometimes your internal bead, on a pipe can can curl like this and and leave a you know, a place where things can get in there and you don’t want your line to get septic. So for us, we did that we debated it. But if we were in a really steep area, and there was a lot of slope, at least 7% Then we sometimes allowed no debate. But generally we always debate especially on a sewer application.

Dustin Langston 

Yes, like cities of Knoxville city of Houston have mentioned a few times they’re doing what’s called thematic pipe bursting, going from manhole to manhole replacing clay lines ductile, whatever. And those guys, I’ve seen anything more than 1% slope, they’ll leave a fusion. So they don’t find anything happening there.

Will Vodak 

differences there.

Dustin Langston 

So again, it’s area to area.

Will Vodak 

There’s not a ton of yeah, there’s not a ton of information out there. Would you ever DB maybe a force Mainers are something pressurized?

Holly Link 

We probably would to make it smooth, you know, to to to let it go, Garry

Timmy Tipton 

Yeah,

Garry 

I mean, I would I’ve seen that will, especially in slurry applications, where you know, it’s going to potentially harden up over time, like it’s not going to be a constant flow. So it’ll turn on and turn off, you know, Flash lines, for example, will drift will DB that because that stuff will harden, and it’s like concrete, once it hardens on there, so we’ll be fittings that that we manufacture, even before they get out for applications like that. What size?

Will Vodak 

That’s a question and you’re what size is the smallest that you can go to and the largest, I believe the

Garry 

smallest DBT tool is a forage tool. And the shoot the largest keeps changing? I think we’re now your Aren’t you on a job? It’s like 54,

Will Vodak 

or 48 and 40. Right now, I think the tool goes up to 54. Oh, so really, I mean, it seems like for whatever I mean, that’s if you have outside of the 54 inch line that needs to DBD deviated, you’re going to send Timmy on a skateboard. So but really, I mean, again, there is there’s a lot of different practices here in the DBT world. And

Dustin Langston 

like that you’d like to ask about though on the pressure side, whether it’s sewer force, main water lines, fire lines, it has a C factor, the pipe has a C factor of 150. And that is including those internal fusion V. Sure. So it’s much more slick on the inside surface than you know, all the metallics that are out there. Even with those internal fuses. It’s

Will Vodak 

time is getting away from me here a little bit, because I’m enjoying this conversation so much. Let’s keep going here. Garry, what is the process of welding pipe and fittings with different DRS, any risks to that?

Garry 

Well, there’s an ASTM standard associated with that, that allows you one Dr. Variation in your fusion process. So for example, we use Dr. Levin pipe, and we need fittings above eight inch, it’s going to be a fabricated fitting, those fittings are commonly made one Dr. thicker, so it’s made out of Dr. Nine, you can fuse those together with no issue whatsoever, you slightly modify your Fusion procedure to basically the the your melt time is for the thicker pipe and your Fusion pressures for the thinner pipe. And that’s kind of the part of the ASTM standard for that.

Will Vodak 

Terry, in a lot of your shops, you guys are routing the fitting ends to match the same Dr. Is that necessary or more cosmetic? It just

Timmy Tipton 

it is more cosmetic. Yeah, it’s perfect. So Garry just started a video on our YouTube channel. On this was like a six minute video that goes through the process of different Dr. Fusion is single Dr. Fusion, when you get into more more than one Dr. Contact us we’re gonna ask we’re gonna ask some questions to be able to figure out if it if it’s appropriate for your application, you want to

Will Vodak 

touch real briefly on. And this kind of comes into the derating of pipe, you want to talk about equivalent dimension ratio, and what and what that means it’s done on a general level. So in

Timmy Tipton 

fabricated fittings, change the direction, you end up with a change the geometry change. So it’s not, you know, a straight pipe. And so that requires a thicker pipe to handle the same pressure in the industry for a long time, we didn’t have a good term to talk about what the press writing of fabricated fitting was. And so some point, you know, 15 years ago, someone came up with the equivalent dimension ratio. So essentially what this says is that for EDR, 11 fitting, you’re getting a fitting that is pressure rated to the same as a Dr. Levin byte. So it’s called the equivalent dimension ratio.

Will Vodak 

Sure. We get we could spend all day on that topic. I mean, there’s there’s externally reinforced fittings there to keep the ID control.

Dustin Langston 

There’s pickable fitting, there’s table

Will Vodak 

fittings, I mean, how much time do we have not much?

Dustin Langston 

To draw it? Again? Yeah,

Will Vodak 

if you can draw, we can build it. Does he want to take this one? When derating pipe pressure for temperature? Do we need to account for atmospheric temperature or only the fluid temperature? Great question here that is,

Dustin Langston 

the more I talked about these kind of things, the West questions I wind up getting in the future, because more people will watch this and learn this. Sure. But it’s very consistent question that I get. Most of the time, we’re going off fluid temperature, buried pipelines, even hot water applications, we’re going off of fluid temperatures, that is the most common. Now if you call me and say hey, I’ve got an aboveground pipeline in West Texas that I’m putting some other fluids and then we’re going to need to start taking consideration atmospheric because if we have very, very high pipe temperatures, West Texas, I can see HDPE pipe get up to 160 degrees, then you’re going to wind up taking kind of an average temperature between your fluid and that external pipe temperature. That’s a very conservative way of thinking about it because you’re not going to be at that 160 degrees external skin temperature all the time, right. It’s only going to be for maybe 10 in the morning and Hell at night. And so it’s very conservative to take that average, if you really wanted to get into the weeds of it, I’m sure you could figure out more of a, you know, swayed pressure one way or the other. But that’s the only time we really see it. The nuclear guys, they like to get really into the weeds on this stuff. And so they’ll actually take ground temperature, which will be very cold on their hot water lines, because that will give them a higher pipe pressure, because they’ll take the middle ground of the ground temperature 60 degrees versus their fluid temperature 100 degrees, and that can give them a higher pressure. But most of the time, we’re going to go off of that if it’s buried asset, you’re going off a fluid temperature.

Will Vodak 

Again, I hate to keep saying this, but there’s there’s no like, simple answer to this. I mean, really, I mean, the experience fluid,

Timmy Tipton 

right temperature above grade.

Dustin Langston 

Right. But if you want to get to the weeds, you have something you really need to have. You’re doing. What was that? Oh, yeah. But if you’re getting into really that much of a detail, you’re doing like finite element analysis, right? The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has a great equation to figure out exactly that pipe pressure. Yeah. Great. It’s very,

Will Vodak 

Timmy, you’ve been dealing with electric fusion for a day or two, I think, once you talk about the reliability of electrofusion couplers. Should they only be used as last resort due to the installation? constructability. That’s why gas uses them. You know, I’m

Timmy Tipton 

a fan. I’m a fan of electric fusion. Right. Right. So but the thing with electrofusion is that you have to use the right tools. Yeah, it’s always about the tools always about your prep. So long as you have the right tools, and which are you’re going to have rerouting clamps, you might have a pipe puller, to pull your couplings on. You have the appropriate scrapers, not just a hand scraper, but no hay, peeler and paper, not a sandpaper, no grinder, but you’re looking at planers, you’re looking at things that are removing the appropriate amount of material.

Will Vodak 

I’m a fan of electrocution. Yeah. And, Holly, this question came up so much that while you were on the municipal Advisory Board, this was a topic that you guys approached? Correct? Right? Once you tell us that the generic, the generic guidelines was maybe two and 12112. That’s right,

Holly Link 

and maybe one in two on electrofusion for smaller and larger fittings. But

Dustin Langston 

what’s larger, public is large, big, it’s not very big, it’s like 14 inch.

Holly Link 

But the biggest thing was was that people were having so many issues. And each electrofusion manufacturer had a different way to install their electrofusion fittings, they each had a different prep a different you know, what you can use, what tools you could use and that kind of thing. And we went as there may be board to all the manufacturers and ask them to Can we please get one set of directions for all electric electrofusion fittings so that everybody can apply the fittings and help you, you know, be able to place your fittings in the market. And they all agreed they all got together every manufacturer, and we came up with a generic electrofusion standard for installing them. So in and it’s worked wonders, because that helps in training everybody out there and electrofusion

Will Vodak 

Well, the genesis was this there’s not really an f2 s and 2620 is guides but fusion but there isn’t really a detailed process ASTM Correct. Henry right. So mostly relies back on the manufacturer to dictate their installation methods, right, the document that you guys have put together again, I highly encourage you if you’re using electrofusion to check out the municipal advisory board and a b one and it may be to those diagrams of the do’s and don’ts and it does fall back on training and installation. I personally witnessed, you know, dozens of 24 inch couplings be successfully installed in a project by somebody that has been doing it for 20 years. I mean, would I recommend that every day? I don’t know it depends on on the circumstance. To me when you get electrofusion request. What are the things you’re looking for on what you would recommend? Either we use limited access but fusion maybe we use flanges maybe we use electrofusion

Timmy Tipton 

it looked at that I mean sizes sizes a portion of it right? You’re looking at how much access Do you have? How many times can you go in and is this a single shot like Do you have another option if this doesn’t go well? In then you know realistically speaking what what do you have available? Do you have the appropriate equipment? Do you have all of your electrofusion equipment? Do you have your limited access but fusion equipment all All these things come into play on what you want to do. And, you know, it is a case by case decision, especially when it comes to repair. You know, when when you’re when you have an open trench, it’s a lot easier to get about fusion unit. When you are up against a wall on a Friday night or a Saturday morning, and you you have a repair that you need to do sometimes, the electrofusion is a better option.

Will Vodak 

Totally. Let’s talk about the bend radius of HDPE. Pipe. Garry wants you talk about maybe the actual formula. Let’s put you on the spot. The only thing around Angela’s see you’ve been around 100 years? I don’t know, maybe you’ve learned a thing or two. What is the band radius of HTP? How does that work? And how can one calculate that? Well,

Garry 

it’s really dictated by the Dr. The pipe will and there is a whole table in the PPI handbook that gives you that that bend radius. So you know commonly and most common pipe sizes Dr. 11. That bend radius, for example, this 25 times the outside diameter of the pipe. So

Will Vodak 

tenant, you got a 10 inch Dr. 11. Yep. The bend radius for that would be 250 inches 10 times actually

Garry 

been incorrect. Well, because God of 10 inch pipe. Oh,

Will Vodak 

thank you very much. This is why I need to continue to come to school here every day with with these folks. Yeah. So 63 times 2020 20

Garry 

as well. easy math equation all the time personnel, your bend radius would then be 500 inches. And that is if you know understand radius from your geometry class that from the center of your circle to the outside of that of that curve. Perfect.

Will Vodak 

Now Holly does this mean that we can just now twist and bend that pile however you want, I mean, like a candy cane all over the place?

Holly Link 

No, I’ve seen contractors who try to or I’ve even seen engineers design it such compound bends where you come up, you’re coming up, and then you want to do this, well that that doesn’t work, especially with a DR nine pipe that just does not work, you’re not gonna get hurt, it’s not going to get around that corner you do, you’re going to have to fuse in bands, you’ve got to use those band ratio to be able to do it correctly and to have your pipe last longer.

Dustin Langston 

I mean, this little counterintuitive to because the thicker the pipe is actually the tighter you tired. But the harder it is going to get to band. So the thinner pipes, you got to be a little easier on him because there’s more of a capability of you know, potential kink, right, but we’re the thick pipes, you’re not going to get that it’s gonna be very difficult to get to that point.

Garry 

If you have any fittings will in in that line, your bend radius now becomes 100 times the pipe.

So just another Yep, so the frack

Will Vodak 

dusty. So what would one be looking for? Let’s say you take it past the point of the ability for that product to bend? How would one know that is been kind of taken into maximum stress too far? That’s

Dustin Langston 

a great question. Because if you do get to that point where you can’t get like, Oh, whoops, my bad, you know, you’re pulling it into place or something like that, and then you string the pipe back out, it will want to go back to round. But if you’re wondering if you permanently hurt it, you’re gonna look for what’s called stress whitening, you know, it’s strain whitening. So if you overstrain the pipe, you’ll actually get white lines on the outside of the pipe, the ears of the kink. And if you see those white lines, cut it out, fuse it back together,

Will Vodak 

just remove that section and you can just cut out that two foot section of the pipe. Right. And you will be back no problem. Great, great stuff. Let’s keep going. We’re gonna hit on the hard hitting questions here. I love this one. Can you speak on the applications using ductile iron fittings, mega lugs and grooved fittings? I’ve seen this as a possibility but does not seem like it is as as common in practice. Tell a story we recently switched a large rural water project from PVC using ductile iron fittings with you know, Megillah connections thrust blocks. When they switched to HDPE. They looked at using HDPE HDPE fittings. Holly you’ve used ductile iron fittings, but you’ve also used HDPE fittings tell us the difference in your opinion.

Holly Link 

Well, to me to fuse everything together in a monolithic system is the best if you absolutely do that, but if you get in a place where you can’t get a fusion machine in there or be able to do what you need to do. Then you can also use a ductile iron fittings to put it in there. But you have to remember to that using these additional fittings gives you another leak point and you have your corrosion factor in the biggest thing with HDPE is having a non corrosive system. I mean something that’s going to last 100 years, but it is part possible abductor line fittings, and there are coatings on those fittings that helped make them last as long as you hope that they last as long as the pipe but potentially that’s your leak point.

Will Vodak 

That’s the HDPE fittings. Another benefit is they’re fully restrained, no thrust blocks required fully fused, and you want to talk more about that

Dustin Langston 

ng adapter, you got to make sure that you’re, you know, torquing it properly. There’s some design characteristic or considerations there. HDPE pipe, though, yeah, direction changes, a T, zero, you know, there’s no need for thrust blocking every fusion that you perform as a fully restrained joint. So you have no need to do any thrust blocks for directional changes in polyethylene system.

Holly Link 

The other thing too, with your fittings is that you need to make sure that you have the appropriate ring. For us, it was rings on MJ adapters, and that kind of thing when we had to bolt something up. And depending upon which the fitting is it was either we could never use a C 153 Ring, because we broke them when we put them in, you know, we

Dustin Langston 

there’s a couple of nerves there too, that we’re getting a lot of China knockoff three rings, and San Francisco was plagued with that for a couple of years.

Holly Link 

Yeah, they they break like that, we always require to see 110 ring. And on a heavier fitting a flange fitting it was a C 207. So you just have to make sure that you’re getting what you need if you’re going to use that type of fitting a ductile bending.

Will Vodak 

Good question here. I heard that a WW a seen I know one only includes Dr. Nine pipe, not Dr. 11. Is this true? If it is true, why the change? Finally, we had somebody that knew the

Dustin Langston 

love talking about this again, the more I talk about it, the less phone calls I get but but you

Will Vodak 

were involved heavily in the in the adoption of a WWE scene, I don’t want to see Nanos and we

Dustin Langston 

were all for it, or you’re absolutely all for it. So this started as a project from chlorine categorizations for HDPE pipe. So this started well over 10 years ago. And see 901 was the first standard that adopted CC three, which is the highest chlorine categorization for polyethylene possible into the standard, it’s required of all piping. One of the other things that we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with with polyethylene, way back when same as you guys and your fittings. There’s so many options. There are so many options. And so that we were trying to get away from that. We want something that somebody is going to pick up off the shelf from any distributor across the country, and it’s going to work in any water system doesn’t matter for in Phoenix doesn’t matter for Maine, just anywhere you get it is going to be a consistent product. pecs did this forever ago, and it was a great idea for them at that time. It’s a great idea for us now, right? So Dr. Nine is the only thing available, if you’re doing an irrigation job and you want to winch Dr. 11. There’s still ASTM standards of that pipe can be made to but if you want to put water system and EYDAP Wi Fi system in the municipal water, it is going to be Dr. Nine and frost that just

Will Vodak 

just the background there. Why is that is that to get the pressures needed.

Dustin Langston 

It’s definitely to fonder temperature, slightly temperature again, in those very hot areas, Phoenix Tucson, some burial depths, there’s no frost line. So we saw burial depths of six inches. And ground temperature is six inches and Phoenix is 100 degrees. And actually I was in Phoenix couple weeks ago. And they’re saying they have wells in that valley that produce water at 100 degrees. So we’re now going to coordinate 100 degree water temperature refillable hot tub, right. And make sure that we have a pipe system that can handle the worst case scenarios the most aggressive in the country. Right. And so other parts of the country. Do you need a Dr. Nine? No, you don’t. But we wanted again, something for everybody to be able to use and have a consistent across the country.

Holly Link 

And the standard previously with all those other listings. And it was so confusing.

Dustin Langston 

You get a two inch Dr. 17 for example. Right? Right. Yeah, make it consistent.

Will Vodak 

Make it consistent, easy stackable for guys like ISCO, and customers like Holly to be able to say hey, we know that this two inch nine is going to be done. And then

Garry 

those sizes were we’re talking a negligible ID difference if anybody’s worried about the ID going from 11 to nine. I mean, you you couldn’t even measure that. So it’s not going to impact you know, any flows or anything like that. Yep.

Dustin Langston 

And see 901 is only three inch pipe and exactly this tubing sizes. Dusty,

Will Vodak 

you know, we’re going to talk about chlorine too when it comes when it comes to that a question here is tell us about CC three and the changes to standards affecting the HDP industry.

Dustin Langston 

So this is definitely one of the biggest questions we get across the country. Doesn’t matter where we’re at. We’ve heard things about chlorine and HDPE pipe. Can you please clarify. And so this goes back to Phoenix, Arizona, Tucson, where we were getting tubing size failures in less than 15 years. And this was the same thing I was talking about earlier with slow crack growth can holy small slit cracks, that was the failure style. But chlorine was speeding that failure on. And so we first had to figure out, well, can we replicate this in a lab. And we were able to do that we brought gentle laboratories into it. And they did a lot of testing for us. So we could figure out an accelerated version to be able to get a failure, that was the exact same style failure, but in a lab situation, we got that dialed in. And then we started testing across the board, all the materials that are out there. Now part of this was back in the 36 await days, the PE 36 awaits. There were some 47 times on the scene. But it was amazing how fast the entire industry came to the table on this and got the CC three rated materials available. So quickly. So for like a year, no plastics, we had a product that was super chlorine resistant. We’re like, Oh, we’re gonna sell a ton of this. And then the whole industry like a year later. Come on. But it was a good thing. This is good. But yeah, so it’s been several years five, six. I’m trying to think when we got the actual ASTM standard finished six, eight years that we’ve been added there. And it’s been an American waterworks standards now seen on a one for four or five years. C 906. Just adopted it, I think two years. Yep. So now every American waterworks standard actually requires that CC three, which is again, the highest chlorine concentration or chlorine resistance number that you can get for polyethylene. Now

Will Vodak 

our manufacturers like WL and some of your your competitors. Are they manufacturing all with CC threes? Or is that need to be a special request port per your

Dustin Langston 

job? No. Especially on water pipe? I can’t actually think of a residence available nowadays. 4710 That’s not CC through? I don’t think any exists in the industry at all. So if you’re going to order HDPE, pipe 4710 You’re going to get CC three, especially if it’s water pipe, it’s going to be mandated to be printed on the product label.

Timmy Tipton 

621 Right.

Dustin Langston 

Yeah, yep. 2021. Garry,

Garry 

since we’re talking just does not want you to touch base, we I’ve run into a couple instances, chlorine dioxide as a disinfectant being used. I don’t know how many of our listeners out here today are dealing with that. Do you want to touch on that? How he works in in that for those people that might be dealing? Working with it? Yeah, so

Dustin Langston 

it’s kind of a hierarchy of core, or oxidative chlorines. I was in Texas last week, three different cities in Texas, they all use chloramine. Which raising the pipe is fantastic. Right? chloramine doesn’t attack HDPE pipe at all? Well, sorry, it’s the least of the three were chloramine candy aggressive towards some rubber gaskets. But it’s the best oxidate or or the best disinfectant for ACP, blood chloramine. The next one would be chlorine, just free chlorine. And then the worst one is chlorine dioxide. Chlorine Dioxide is very rarely used. It’s in less than 1% of the municipal applications. So if you are using it, please talk to us first before using ATP and piping your system. And we’ll try and figure out you know, depends on how much you’re using what your water temperatures are. There are a lot of things to consider there. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Will Vodak 

Last question here. Let’s talk about taste and odor concerns dusty and Holly. I mean, you’ve probably experienced this over the time, there’s a lot of concerns out there about HDPE leaching into the water or taste and odor concerns. Once you talk on that and, and what the data and testing is like to backup our findings. The

Dustin Langston 

great part is there is no taste or odor issue with ACP pipe. So much so that we actually have the first beer main in the world. I love this slide. Peter talks about it all the time in Brussels, where they actually pipe their beer from the manufacturing locations to the bottling plant. And if you have to worry about a taste and odor issue, you’re not going to be using it for beer. And then all the beer companies that in Colorado, for example, they’re using it for their water lines as well. So taste and odor where it matters. It’s not an issue. So same thing with your water system. There’s not a taste and odor issue.

Holly Link 

Yeah, yeah. We didn’t find find it. We didn’t people didn’t complain about

Will Vodak 

it. Good. Yeah. This wasn’t scheduled here. But maybe you could just take a second to talk about your experience. And just on a broad scale. What was it like adopting HDPE? Early? Would you do it again? And what do you say to those out there that are interested in looking at their system in a more comprehensive way to decide about, you know, what materials they’re using moving forward?

Holly Link 

The experience was hard at first because there were a lot of operators and people who did not want to change. And that was a big thing with HDPE pipe, you know, they didn’t want to change. I talked to a salesman once who was from England. And I asked him I said What is it about Europe adapting HDPE so readily in the United States not taking it on? He goes, Oh, you Americans such metal heads.

Dustin Langston 

School we had metal classes we never had last class. No.

Holly Link 

So but I would do it again. Because even though it was hard in the beginning, and things have changed so much since the beginning, I mean, since 20 years since I’ve been in it for 20 years, that things have gotten better. And I have to tell you, you should go this way and adopted and ask for help. There are so many people out there that are we’re here to help to answer any questions, there are organizations out there to help to do HDPE work. We’ve already I’ve already gone through all the pain, I don’t want you to go through the pain again, you know, to learn what’s best, what’s not. And, and we’re here to help anybody do that in and work on it and change to their system or, you know, replace parts or begin to move that way. And er mean, good dude by bit, so you don’t have to do it all at once. But we i i would definitely do it again. Right.

Will Vodak 

Dusty Timmy. Garry, any final thoughts? Here? We’ve covered a lot of ground. We only got about halfway through this. So there’s gonna be a lot to come. We’re sorry. Any final thoughts? Dusty? Oh, I’m

Dustin Langston 

trying to think of any other questions that I get all the time, the lifespan of HDPE definitely is well over 100 years. Yeah. And it’s funny, when you really started looking at the numbers, it’s, it’s well, it’s a long time past 100 years, generally even putting 100 year stamp on something we were the first to do it. Everybody else just kind of followed suit. And even then people were like, How can you say this? Like how can you even we can’t comprehend 100 year life. And so if I were to go out there and say oh, it’s like 250 years, no one’s gonna believe me. But I always like to talk about the things I get most of the phone calls about, because the more I talk about them, the less phone calls I get. Not that I don’t like talking to people, but you know, please send me an email. But the biggest one, I think is still going to be transitions. So let’s say we do a directional drill or a river under a road using polyethylene for the hard part. And then you transition and go back with, you know, a PVC or ductile iron, it’s important to restrain that transition. One of the biggest

Holly Link 

pipe links down, well,

Dustin Langston 

one or the other, you’re thrust blocking, you don’t need to be worried about restraining other pipe, download down the line. But if you’re doing like a mega lug or something like that, you need to make sure you’re restraining several joints. So that’s the big one. Whether it’s a pipe burst, whether it’s a directional drill, do your installation, let it sit for a while, let it get consistent with the ground temperature, let it get relaxed the way those stresses before you’re hooking it up and putting it thrust blocks.

Holly Link 

And when you do that, make sure you have enough at the ends

Dustin Langston 

also true. Don’t pull it into a manhole in a pipe burst and cut it flush right away. Let it sit for a long

Will Vodak 

day. Yeah, absolutely. Timmy anything from you.

Timmy Tipton 

Just call us with your needs.

Well said,

Dustin Langston 

draw some really crazy stuff, since they actually can build it. I’m really curious now very

Will Vodak 

creative. They’re very creative. Garry has been a fun one Oh, that’s had on the show.

Garry 

These people carry some of the load because you get awful heavy during the normal insights will so

Will Vodak 

with that, we’ll call it I’d like to go ahead and talk a little bit about this great company that I work for, and that is sponsoring hosting this event here is this go industries, been around a long time only dealing with one product and that’s HDPE. We’ve got decades of experience, from materials supply engineering services, design services, fabrication technicians, equipment, basically ISCO is here to support you, from the very beginning. From this point right now you’re just thinking about it through your specification, you’re budgeting, supply the materials, making sure everything gets out there in as quality manner as possible, and then is installed safely. That’s what we love to do. So please give us a call. We’ve got experts around the country ready to help out with any project that you have. Whether it’s up in the Yukon or down in Florida, we’re here to have you covered facilities nationally as well. So with that, I’d like to thank everybody so much for joining today. Please connect with us on various social media channels. I love saying this because I feel like a true influencer. Tick tock Snapchat, what are we getting Snapchat, Heather. We got we have Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. We’re posting a lot of great content there, including events like this. And we hope you’ll keep tuned in because we’re not going to stop here. And we might even do a second one of these someday, hopefully soon. So with that, I would really like to thank our guests from coming in from out of town and YouTube for him from coming in from downstairs or upstairs. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thanks to you all for joining us today. That’s it until next time on ISCO insights in the meantime stay safe out there and as always happy fusing we’ll see you next time