Nothing brings folks together Part II - Sewer drainage

Nothing brings folks together like sewage running 30' under the roads.

Seriously - it's great stuff. Your remains of the day sail away - traversing mystical terrains - off to a better, less in your face kinda places. Places where it's ok to be a stinker. Well it isn't entirely magic. A lot of it happens because people work hard to make it happen. As discussed previously - underground sewer systems have existed for thousands of years - and it beats many alternatives such as caca en la calle - spanish for "The bathroom is any and everywhere" or "Welcome to Tijuana." Is it a great solution? No. From far below it blows on high. It costs millions of dollars to install these systems, and at the end of the analysis you're losing all of that potentially valuable organic fertilizer. The Aztecs recognized this and were keen to collect all of the stuff and sell it back to the population as fertilizer....

Oh well. Maybe one day. In the mean time we're making certain that the stuff goes underground and arrives safely to a central destination.

Sewer lines are the most difficult lines to set - the tests are rigorous to ensure a proper seal on every section, pressure and vacuum tests are basic along with a host of other tests. Our recent work led us almost 30' below the earth to lower an existing sewer line 2/10s of a foot - roughly 2.5 inches.

Technical Specs
All lines are required to pass a ~5-10 minute pressure test. 10 psi is applied inside the line using a flowthrough plug on one end and a solid plug on the other.

The manhole must pass a vacuum test of -10 bars Hg for one minute without dropping a pound

Mandrel test - all the PVC must have a mandrel sent through to ensure that no warpage has occurred during the backfilling of the ditch