Cities share pipe dreams

Posted by Laura

Guelph isn't the only city concerned about the future of its pipes, roads and sewers.

In today's Hamilton Spectator, reporter Eric McGuinness explains how Hamilton is using trenchless techniques to rehabilitate its sewer system.

Click here to see the story.

Guelph has started to use the same process for its water mains. The first pilot project was on Rickson Avenue where city workers relined the water main with a fibreglass resin.

"It makes a pipe within a pipe. It's the latest technology," Gerry Best, city supervisor of water distribution, told me last week.

"It's a little cheaper, but where you save your costs is there's no reinstatement fee. You don't have to put a new road in because it's all done underground."

Comments

[Edward Pickersgill]

Its really great that unlike in the past they have done all the long term tests and determined there will be no breakdown of the fibreglass resin in the short or long term. Right? I mean all the neighbours in the Rickson area were informed their water will be fed to them through fibreglass resin lined pipes. The educational package must have been quite impressive to have resulted in zero objections.

The odors mentioned in the Hamilton article were only short term and were not harmful, right? I guess we should all raise a tall fibreglass of water and toast modern technology.

[Grunt]

It seems to me that this process was used several(3 or 4) years ago on Woolwich Street opposite the cemetary and the Dairy Queen!?

[Laura]

That's an interesting point, Ed. I wonder what kind of education campaign residents receive prior to the upgrades. I'll check into that.

When I spoke to Gerry Best, the city's supervisor of water distribution, he said the City of Toronto has employed this technology for several years.

While resin-lined pipes are relatively new to Guelph, the city also replaces its old ductile iron and cast iron pipes with PVC, a hard plastic.

[Laura]

Grunt -- I'll also check in with Waterworks to see if I'm wrong about the pilot. I'll post an update early next week.

[Michele]

Remember glass bottles for baby formula? Well, glass bottles are returning due to some studies on the leaching effects of the plastic (Bis-A). All pipes leach to a certain degree and I'm sure the fiberglass pipe coating has had testing done to assure public safety. Why would a contractor put the public at risk when they will be around in the next 10 to 30 years to stand by their product? I'm sure the resin and curing system utilized on this project meets food grade applications even though hard plastic coatings leach some quantity of the chemical composition. This is a great idea: to save time and not to dig up the street to inconvience the residence. Plastic is better than asbestos! It was thought in the past that "asbestos is the bestous" but Bis-A gets an "A" for this application.