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| 1,300 Feet of 6-inch Conduits Bored Under the Intracoastal Waterway |
By Linda Bridges
MIAMI, FL--A.R.E. Utility Construction, Inc., a horizontal boring company based in Pompano Beach, FL, teamed-up with Florida Power & Light (FPL) to install conduits for new power cables and a fiber line in Miami. There was one catch, the pipes had to be laid under Florida's Intracoastal Waterway.
This job was a big one: A 1,300- foot long bore with seven 6-inch conduits in a single shot. Six of the conduits were used for FPL power lines and one was reserved for fibernet.
The bore required wire-line steering and took two weeks to shoot out.
Despite its expertise and equipment, the underwater ground conditions were a challenge for A.R.E.
"It went from severe rock, to muck and back to sever rock," said Steve Wertheimer, A.R.E.'s CEO. "We started out using a ėtri-hawk' drilling head and changed to a ėmud motor' to drill through the rock."
During the first pre-ream, the A.R.E. crew encountered buried sheets of pilings on the exit side of the bore. The company used a track hoe, hydraulic pump and shoring to expose, cut and eventually remove the sheet pilings. Once removed, the pre-ream continued successfully. The job required two pre-reams, one 24-inch and one 36-inch, prior to pulling in the seven conduits with a 36-inch reamer.
The next hurdle was one of logistics. There was a limited amount of space to lay out the 1,300 feet of conduit before pulling it. The crew was forced to wrap the conduits in a big loop and had to band them together for control. Backhoes then fed the pipe around a small building.
The setup site was also cramped--smack between a bridge embankment and an active hotel parking lot. A.R.E. couldn't spread out, since hotel guests required full access to the parking lot.
Nevertheless, the bore was a success. All 1,300 feet of conduit was pulled. A.R.E then proofed and separated the conduits. It then installed hand holes on the Fibernet conduit and marked the ends of the FPL pipes.
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