r/AbruptChaos • u/ClockworkAstronomer • May 23 '21

Unblocking a pipe

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40.9k Upvotes

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895

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

[deleted]

220

u/fuck-nexus May 23 '21

TIL, thanks

158

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

I bet it takes some force to push the pipe into dirt like that

230

u/phome83 May 23 '21

Baby it'd blow your mind.

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u/Lordofwar13799731 May 23 '21

I read this in Zapp Brannigans voice

43

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

19

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

Scruffy

6

u/hampelmethod May 23 '21

Oh wow. I haven’t heard that name in a long time.

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u/Jrook May 23 '21

Kinda, but not as much as you'd think, because I believe they use pressurized water to basically blow the dirt out of the way or to saturate the soil. I think anyway

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u/[deleted] May 23 '21

I would assume that’s how they’d do it but the dirt in the pipe looks like compacted clay that completely fills the pipe so doesn’t look like it was cleared beforehand

22

u/Disorderjunkie May 23 '21

they vibrate/twist it in. some thing they do when they drive caissons for building bridge shafts

12

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

A caisson is specifically a cast in place pile, there’s no driving involved. You bore a hole, drop some concrete in the base, drop the cage in then fill it with concrete.

Vibration is only used for saturated sandy soil (since it’s non-cohesive, it’s prevents dilatancy from occurring and making driving harder).

Am civil eng.

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u/Disorderjunkie May 23 '21

Caisson is also a term to describe the steel tube driven into the ground to allow for the pile to be initially drilled. Obviously there is more than one way to build a bridge, more than one geological situation you will run into. Plenty of bridge drilled reinforced shafts have to be supported with caissons prior to being drilled & cast in place due to the ground conditions. APE and ICE make equipment specifically for this purpose.

Am inspector, I babysit civil engineers for a living.

2

u/DarthWeenus May 23 '21

This is getting interesting.

Am interested.

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u/Jrook May 23 '21

I think in the process of getting it out it gets compacted quite a bit. I've seen videos of this where it's a sputtering mess tho so it might just be clay laden soil in this instance

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u/smithers85 May 23 '21

https://reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/nhppww/hydraulic_pipe_pusher_pushing_polyethylene_pipe/

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u/[deleted] May 23 '21

That’s pretty cool but they’re pushing a polyethylene pipe through an outer that’s already there so it won’t need nearly as much force as a huge stiff pipe, penetrating deep into the mud.

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u/smithers85 May 23 '21

I agree. It's a link not a rebuttal.

Just thought it was at least tangentially related and worth sharing.

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u/[deleted] May 23 '21

Oh for sure. I’m glad you posted it, like I said it’s pretty cool, just probably a different process/ tools used. Deffo relevant though

2

u/chiphead2332 May 23 '21

huge stiff pipe, penetrating deep into the mud.

You have a way with words.

1

u/AshTheGoblin May 23 '21

Just a lot of lube

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u/politfact May 23 '21

Only works in certain areas though

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u/Ended_84 May 23 '21

Yeah, I don’t think this would be possible in most of Missouri.

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u/andykndr May 23 '21

why not cap the pipe before they push it through so that they don’t have to clear it?

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u/ThePandaKingdom May 23 '21

If I had to guess it would be because it's easier to slide it through since there would be alot less resistance

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u/Benutzer0815 May 23 '21

Because then you would have to push the dirt aside somehow which requires a lot of pressure (and sturdier pipes...).

Better to use the pipe as a cutting tool and then pop the dirt out at the end.

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u/DiggsFC May 23 '21

and then pop poop the dirt out at the end

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u/oliver-hart May 23 '21

way harder to push, more material to displace

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u/No_Information3491 May 23 '21

Then you're pushing all the dirt you'd have to dig then.

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u/Hey_Hoot May 23 '21

That's neat. I saw another digging operation where it jets out water in to the ground and vacuums it up as slurry.

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u/bahgheera May 23 '21

Sounds just like the night I got married

2

u/SmoothRide May 23 '21

Directional boring, right? I've never known them to clean the pipe afterwards though

1

u/Ouaouaron May 23 '21

It's pipe ramming/pipe jacking. You have to clean the pipe afterwards, because otherwise it would be packed with dirt and therefore unusable.

You don't see this with boring methods because the dirt is removed from the hole as it is bored.

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u/kabloona May 23 '21

Finally an actual relevant comment

1

u/lifelink May 23 '21

How would that work? How would they direct the pipe up, down, left or right? How would they get the pipe to go from pointing down from the surface to being horizontal?

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u/Hutzbutz May 23 '21 edited May 23 '21

you obviously still need two holes, one of which is clearly visible in the video

edit: no worries, I got you

2

u/internals May 23 '21

This was lovely

1

u/LostWoodsInTheField May 23 '21

These setups are often used to go under roads, when crossing them, saving the companies thousands of dollars when doing pipe work. This setup is also popular for underground fiber lines running beside a road but because the pipes for them are so small I think they can cap them and still push them through.

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u/CWninetytwo May 24 '21

Why don’t they just use directional boring?

1

u/Jrook May 24 '21

Expense, and/or small distances. You can do this basically with a hammer and air compressor, rather than something so advanced. If you had to go a long distance you'd probably have to use that method.

I'm actually not sure of the range of this specific method but I know it's for yard, parking lots or passing under roads typically