Digging the roads and obstructing traffic for replacement of old pipelines will soon be a thing of past when BWSSB adopts the new ‘pipe blast technique’ and ‘trenchless technique’. A pilot project to assess the economic feasibility and adaptability of the techniques is being carried out near Madhavan Park in Jayanagar, where Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is replacing 366 metres of pipeline. A Mumbai-based private construction company is laying the pipeline at the cost of Rs 25 lakh.
Under the new ‘pipe blast technique’,A pit, two feet wide and four feet long is dug near a manhole the pipeline runs through. A compressor inserted in the pit is used to blast the existing pipeline up to a length of 100 metres.The debris is cleared off from the next manhole with the help of a metal chain.
This paves the way for inserting a new pipeline, which can even be of a greater diameter. The metal chain has a sensor, which alerts the diameter if some of the rubble is left inside. The ducts that were connected to the old pipelines are reconnected to the new pipeline through a sensor-guided process.If the sensor-guided process turns failure, parallel pipelines are laid from the consumers’ buildings with the help of ‘trenchless technique’.
If this experiment succeeds, BWSSB will adopt it to lay pipelines in most of the busy roads.This is a time-saving technique and need not required to dig the road for replacement of old pipelines.
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