ISCO’s experts answer your questions about HDPE piping solutions, applications and uses.

Sean Moth  00:00

Hello, and welcome to the ISCO insights podcast. My name is Sean Moth, great to have you along, as always. And we had a webinar toward the end of 2023, where we address some questions that you had as follow ups on some of our other webinars and felt like you know what, why not do the same for the podcast. So while we weren’t able to get to all the questions, publicly, everybody was followed up with and answered individually. But we wanted to give those answers publicly that maybe we didn’t get to on the webinar, as we feel like maybe it helps you out a little bit gives you some extra insight, no pun intended. So once again, all of the questions that follow up with the webinars are always answered directly to the questioner. But we’re gonna go ahead and compile these into a podcast. And we have gathered our experts with decades, if not, almost centuries of experience in high density polyethylene piping solutions here at ISCO. Business Manager Will Vodak joins us. Well, we’ve got a couple of questions for you that have come our way. I guess we’ll start with the easy one, how to determine the maximum bend radius of HDPE. Based on thickness, obviously, we got a rule of thumb for that one. Pretty simple formula complex.

Will Vodak  01:09

I’m glad you’re asking me the easy questions. This is one that I can answer, right. The great thing about the Dr. System with HDPE is that the bend radius is based on the dimension ratio of the pipe itself. I don’t have all the numbers off top my head, but for instance, Dr. 11 pipe, which is the most common HDPE that we sell, you basically take the I.D. in inches, multiply that which is the outer diameter, the diameter of the pipe, yep, times 25. So the bend radius for Dr. 11 would be 25 times the OD equals the radius of a circle. So there are a couple examples out there that you could use. But you know, let’s take, let’s take 20 inch pipe and I’ll break out my calculator here real quick. I like it. 20 inch pipe tie, which is nominal, 20 inch OD HDPE Dr. 11 times 25 gives us 500 inches is the radius of the circle, okay, for what you can bend, safely bend that pipe, bend

Sean Moth  02:11

it right into a ring in a circle, correct, interesting. Obviously, that speaks to the flexibility of HDP. And that’s a mansard quality that the pipe just can’t offer. You know, even flexible. Pipe PVC is not flexible, it’s rigid, concrete, ductile iron, I mean, there are lots of great qualities HDPE that has to be one of the most useful I guess, when it comes to installs. It

Will Vodak  02:30

allows some really creative ways to install HDPE, you can and you can basically fuse up all to 610 100,000 feet of it if you need to. And it allows you really creative ways to bend that pipe in various areas that you can avoid, you know having any difficulties installing it. Fantastic.

Sean Moth  02:51

Our next question is a little complex. We’ll do what we can to answer this one. We want information on designing HDPE piping for house sewage pump systems. And for the sewer force main in the public right away. This person has seen failed piping systems using PVC field a PVC has been kind of easy to get for the past 20 or 30 years. They would like to convert a PVC sewer force main to HDPE. But there’s some challenges. Part of it’s the culture of the maintenance crews to tolerate making repairs to the pvc piping every year. Connections and fittings seem to be an big issue for the older maintenance crews. Let’s simplify this and say this. How easy is it to teach old dogs new tricks when it comes to converting a PVC system to HDPE?

Will Vodak  03:34

I love this question because it’s very simple in my mind, we get the question how do you repair HDPE piping? And my answer is you repair it the same way you repair pvc piping or ductile iron piping or cast iron piping. We just have more options. So really, it is I think all about just trying something that you’re already doing. It’s just a different pipe material. So you can take a repair coupling for instance, that’s on the shelf for iron pipe size PVC, and there are many that are dual rated for IPS PVC and IPS HDPE. If you’ve got a ductile system and you’re converting to dip HDPE there are repair couplings for ductile iron that will work on ductile iron and HDPE. So really, you know the bottom line is you got to stop the water you got to make a repair. It’s just with HDPE got too many options. I think that you know kind of scares people away. The simple answer is grab the same coupling he got off the shelf, stop that waterflow and then come to ISCO talk to us about a more permanent repair, which could be electrofusion. Could be but fusion could be some flange adapters. Sure, we’ve really got a plethora of options that can can really help and it’s just like any skill you have to learn a new skill. These utilities are continuing to progress towards a more sustainable product in the future. And I suspect some of those guys that are a little, you know, avoiding new materials are probably going to be retiring here shortly and some new blood coming in. So it’s just like learning a new skill and learning a new technology. Well, at

Sean Moth  05:19

some point, they were willing to accept us not using hollowed out logs to convey water, so I guess they can, they can be flexible. Speaking to that to just two things, one, if it is an HDPE system, you need to shut off the water, you get that opportunity where you can just squeeze off the pipe, whereas some of those other legacy piping systems don’t give you that luxury. And two, it may be just speaking to, if you have an HDPE system here for the sewer force, meaning that the likelihood of repairs is minimized because those joints aren’t gonna leak both

Will Vodak  05:48

great points. So to your first question, you see those videos, I don’t personally have social media, you’re gonna encourage me to send our social media pages, but you see on Tik Tok, or Facebook or my wife has shown me some videos of some guy getting sprayed in the face trying to repair some PVC that’s failed, right? Yeah, PVC mechanical joint that has come apart randomly due to construction of the earth or pipe moving or whatever. There’s no valves around, they can’t shut that water off. So those poor guys have to get in there and put a repair coupling and they’re just getting blasted by 150 pound pressure of of water. With HDPE, you can squeeze that flat, you can have a squeeze off tool on the shelf at all times. And that gives you essentially a valve wherever you want in your system. So you can squeeze that pipe immediately stop that water flow to make that repair, make sure to do it three times the diameter back and then you know, release that pressure slowly and you’ve got basically a repair complete, and a resilient pipe

Sean Moth  06:46

that just goes back to normal 100% Remind me the second part of that. So we’re just talking about if it’s an HDPE system, the likelihood of the leaks or the repair is limited. That’s

Will Vodak  06:54

a great point. When fused correctly, HDPE is a single monolithic system, it’s not going to fall apart. We say 100 plus year life cycle. We’re not saying that, you know, a century from now, a minute after essentially it’s going to it’s going to suddenly crumble or fall apart. Now when installed correctly. HDPE is one single long pipeline and typically doesn’t really break unless it’s interfered with by a third party. So directional drillers I’ve seen telephone call pull drillers nail the pipe like a bullseye. You know, somebody may be excavating some, some area might dig into it. But this pipe does not fall apart. Because there are no joints. There are no mechanical joints in these systems. So when fused, it’s a single long pipeline. And because of that is leak free and way more susceptible to failure than other material.

Sean Moth  07:47

And if anybody’s curious, just HDP hasn’t been around for 100 years yet. So we’ll see what that future looks like you’re doing so well. I’m gonna borrow a clip show or somebody else, man, let’s bring this is a really easy one. Because I even know the answer to it, but you’ll have a better answer. Can HDPE be used as conduit? HDB

Will Vodak  08:04

can be used as conduit we see it a lot. I mean, everybody has seen conduit driving down, you know, whatever road you’re on, they’re using it for telecommunications and a lot of different you know, various markets. Yeah, well, we’re seeing what’s really interesting is areas like wind farms and solar farms, where they’re using eight black, you know, HDPE 4710, typically a little larger scale because that conduit the cabling in there is thicker. Sure. And they are using that for all of their wind farms. I mean, so they’re basically taking miles and miles and miles where they have to you know, take the cables from the from the turbines and send them out to the conductor’s and they are removing the internal beats so that the the cable and conduits not getting hung up. But the HDPE isn’t in conduit is an emerging market for us. You’re seeing that on offshore wind farms as well. Some major large diameter, conduit kind of tubes. What’s interesting, Sean is they’re also using HDPE as kind of like a a master conduit. So sometimes you’ll see a really large diameter HDPE with casing spacers. And sometimes inside that HDPE will be different systems, maybe you’ll have several small diameter four inch lines inside a larger 36 inch line to prevent for any corrosion and they’ll put some other services in there. So it’s really I mean, because it’s a few system there. We’re finding more and more applications for it as time goes by and conduit is certainly one of them.

Sean Moth  09:40

I think I remember there was a job that we had done under the Detroit River that was kind of expanding electricity and gross Iowa, Michigan and if I’m not mistaken, is it the orange K or the orange spools that we see a lot of times that are telecommunication line conduit and that kind of unmoral

Will Vodak  09:55

area Yeah, that is that is a polyethylene plastic. Now there is a little difference between that level of polyethylene and the level of polyethylene that we’re selling more into the industry and municipal systems. The standards are different, the ratings are different. The amount of regrind that they’re using is different. Remember, those are just housing cables. Sure. All polyethylene when it comes out of the extruders, or when it comes out of the kind of what’s the word I’m looking for? The the HDPE, resin plants, okay, this is clear. So when it comes out of the residence, plants, resin plants, that that plastic is clear, they can add colors into it. And then there are various types of of different polyethylene that are rated for more human consumption. Or if it needs to be for particular types of chemical waste, they might need certain ratings for that. But it’s all it’s all polyethylene. It’s just different. Sometimes it’s low density, medium density, high density, it’s got different standards and, and

Sean Moth  11:01

ultimately, the conduit ideas is just the opposite of the municipal sewer and water. In that case, you’re keeping things in this case, just want to keep everything else want to keep everything and it can be done because it’s at monolithic.

Will Vodak  11:10

Well, they’re really using that conduit for that reason. Yeah. But also notice back to our original question on bend radius, those conduit rolls are can fit inside the size of this recording shear. I mean, they’re using it because of how easy it is to install that conduit because of the bend radius, durability, the toughness of polyethylene versus other material and a

Sean Moth  11:33

lower impact install 100% Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me, man. We’ll vote on our next question. We go to Senior Vice President of Sales, Mike Raider. Mike our audience wanted to know what the HDPE industry looks like. In 2024, probably focusing on the final three quarters. It is an election year, a contentious one at that. But with your experiences, how does an election year in general impact HDP in that industry?

Mike Raider  11:58

So I may go a little bit against the grain on the election year sort of factor in markets in general. I haven’t seen it wildly swaying demand. Sure. In the past, I think there’s a lot of talk around it. I’m not sure I’ve seen the actual impact. As far as like, Where do I see the HDPE market for 24. It’s a lot of mixed signals. If you talk to manufacturers, they’ll tell you that it could be sort of steady state to a little bit of growth. But but pretty much if you look at wanting to bracket it, I would say that the general consensus is anything that might be 5% Decrease in market activity versus 5% increase anything in between could happen. Sure. So so really, I think there there’s a good message in there and that there may not be a really huge swing, especially on the downside. Okay. As

Sean Moth  13:03

we have the experts, you know, then we put you on the spot with the follow ups. But one thing that I’ve noticed, maybe primarily municipally, are some of these legacy piping systems hitting the end of their road. Is the is the addressing municipal problems, a matter of budgets being able to, or because I know the problem seemed to be there. It’s just in some cases, it feels like the money’s not in the budget to take care of that. Yeah.

Mike Raider  13:28

So I do think that budgets always play a huge part, right. And what I’ve noticed, since I’ve been in the industry is we always seem to kick that can down the road. Well, you’re gonna have to do it at some point, because a lot of the infrastructure is failing does need to be replaced. The other interesting thing is there’s been a lot of stimulus money that has been thrown out there over the past couple years. I don’t know that it’s actually found its way down to the people yet that are actually going to use it. So I do think there’s a bright future there, because I don’t think the money is shown up yet. Yeah.

Sean Moth  14:03

So maybe kind of a little bit of a red tape impact that those initiatives have been put forth. But we’re still waiting to get through all of the bids in the process of actually putting it into action. Correct.

Mike Raider  14:13

All right. All right. So I think it could be some really good opportunities in the future, especially with the municipal side of things. Wonderful. Mike, we

Sean Moth  14:22

appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Rolling on with our insights podcast as we get to some more q&a, of course, graciously co hosting with Will Vodak, Garry Bouvet resident expert on HDP all things HDPE. And of course, we enlisted will we’re gonna enlist Garry. And Garry. First of all, we just appreciate your time now. Thanks.

Garry Bouvet  14:41

Great to begin with you, Sean. Yeah. So

Sean Moth  14:43

our first question comes from somebody that’s what they want to know about scoring and whether or not scarring a pipe can cause problems with the length of the pipe and how it can be installed without scoring. I guess this is one of those. My understanding of it is there’s a certain allowance that can happen because it’s Jen really going to happen? You’re dealing with rock and soil and that type of thing. It’s if you get to a threshold that it causes a problem, maybe you can kind of clarify that a little bit. Yeah,

Garry Bouvet  15:08

I mean, HDPE is a very durable product. And it’s why it’s the pipe of choice. For a lot of these, what we call trenchless or less trench technologies like directional drilling pipe bursting, just to name a couple. Scarring is going to happen when you look at some of these places where they’re installing this and the things that are in the ground. But again, the pipe is very durable. But there is a range a guide, so to speak, where you’re allowed 10% of the wall thickness of the pipe. To get to that it takes quite a bit of an effort. If you’ve seen some of these installations that I’ve seen over the years, you’re thinking that pipes going to be tore up and it just isn’t. But if the gouge is too deep, Sean, what you could get is premature failure on the HDPE pipe from an eventual blowout that may take 1520 25 years before somebody may see that.

Sean Moth  16:08

And I’m imagining this question I’m kind of speculating. But maybe in the case of where your your your pipe bursting, or your slip lining, it’s kind of the the proactive front end maintenance that prevents things from this happening, like making sure the pipe is cleared out, make sure you get a camera in there, you see what the path is going to be. So you don’t run into those problems down the

Garry Bouvet  16:28

road. Absolutely. Those are a couple on slip lining. If we’re directional drilling or the pipe bursting, and have that pipe, that fusion string of type strung out behind them. Sometimes, you know, if they’re worried about that, and put it up on some pipe rollers, low profile pipe rollers do a great job of keeping that pipe off the pavement and moving smoothly into the insertion pit.

Sean Moth  16:53

Fantastic. Another question wants to know, when would you specify electrofusion over Buck fusion? And I guess that that one’s so broad? I mean, I guess the electrofusion kind of comes into play more with maybe some confined spaces or repairs, specifically. But I think some of that might be just personal preference.

Garry Bouvet  17:16

Yeah, I mean, right? There’s a lot of different variables in that answer, Sean. It is a replacement for but fusion. Right? It would take the place of that. But it still is a fusion. Yeah. So it’s got to be dry conditions, just like but fusion has to be can’t have water coming down or whatever liquid coming down the pipeline. The you still have the same pipe preparations. And we’re talking about in ditch work. So it’s not easy to keep it, you know, always perfectly clean in order to do some of the fusion work. But you hit it earlier when you said you know, repairs, right? Once polyethylene is buried and anchored. In order to do a bulk fusion, one side has to be able to move to the other. Yeah. And you don’t have that if you’re anchored on both ends. So cutting in a spool piece using two couplings and, and a replacement piece of pipe is a great area where the electrofusion can be very beneficial. That

Sean Moth  18:22

Highland Supercell, one of those in particular that really lets you get in there without any any sort of power to it. So definitely some flexibility there. That same question kind of goes on to ask about how would you recommend best specifying the removal of the internal weld bead? And they specifically talk about gravity sewer? And in terms of slope and trapping? Where do we lie on on the interior being removed?

Garry Bouvet  18:47

Yeah. So that’s always a big question that that people want to have answered, do I need to remove that bead? And the first answer is, if it’s a pressure application, the bead is all the flows are calculated with the bead being present. So it’s not necessary to remove that that fusion bead. You mentioned gravity applications, that is an area where removing that internal bead may be necessary, just due to ponding and puddling. So we don’t get bacteria buildup behind a fusion bead. So a lot of that depends on the slope, the how much slope you have in the in the feed line in terms of the flow that’s that’s going down stream, but the bead can be removed. There’s multiple tools out there that allow us to have access to that fusion be once it’s been made, even if

Sean Moth  19:44

it’s a string and that beads, the little ways in there too. There’s that technology that allows you to reach out

Garry Bouvet  19:49

and we want to do it after that that join is being pooled, and before we drag that pipe and move down to the next one. Sure.

Sean Moth  19:56

I think you kind of answered this. They wanted to know the best way to specify By uniform slope avoiding contractor installed low points between manholes where you get the sewage trapped, that kind of boils down to the engineering on the front end of it. And usually that’s done the right way, when you deal with someone like us,

Garry Bouvet  20:11

it’s also, it’s all falls a lot on the contractor who’s doing the installation. Sure, if he doesn’t, you know, prepare his trench properly. And if he’s got dips, or sags in that, in that bottom of that trench, the pipe being flexible, is going to take those angles, and so we want to eliminate them. So it does come down to the contractor installing properly. Sure, this

Sean Moth  20:35

is an interesting question, how do you support HDP? If it’s overhead, and not lying on the ground?

Garry Bouvet  20:42

By using clamps on? Yeah, so polyethylene, you know, one of its big benefits is its flexibility. But that can be detrimental when you go to above ground and your pipe starts getting affected by temperatures and what’s flowing through it. Next thing, you know, it’s looking like a garden hose. And so we want to avoid that. But there’s there’s guidelines, there’s calculations that that can be done, based on your temperature deltas, how much spacing where the spacing support spacing needs to be had kind of on the sink, but the other way around? Absolutely. Exactly. On the other side, so we want to keep it in place, they’re going

Sean Moth  21:23

to ask how do you protect it if it’s exposed to the environment. And I know that most times it’s buried, I think I’ve seen maybe in some ski resorts, that it’ll just be exposed, because eventually it’s going to be buried under the snow. But I don’t know if that if that’s one you can address in terms of environment and protection from

Garry Bouvet  21:39

well, the neat thing about polyethylene, Sean is it’s UV protected. So exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet is not a problem or not an issue for HDPE pipe, we’ve got piping systems that have been above ground working for 40 plus years, and they’re still functioning. Now, you know, we we’ve seen other things shone in this world of people using the pipe as target practice, and not necessarily the best the pipe to to prevent damage there. So if that’s a concern, then you know, maybe it needs to be encased or something else. But just by itself, the pipe is more than capable of withstanding exposure. And

Sean Moth  22:25

usually, it’s underground. So you don’t have to worry about that. What are the lowest and highest temperatures that are recommended for HDPE. And I guess this gets into part that you’re

Garry Bouvet  22:35

just you got me, there’s kind of two different types of polyethylene. Now we’ve got your standard, what I call conventional HDPE, pipe 4710 resin that has temperature limitations, 240 degrees of internal medium flowing through it. But we do now have a product of polyethylene raised temperature, which can handle pressure applications up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sean Moth  23:04

There’s a question about slurry applications for HDPE compared to carbon steel, and I know that in a lot of mining applications, that that that’s something that comes to fruition quite often,

Garry Bouvet  23:16

absolutely polyethylene, in the right scenario, can outperform steel pipe four to one, that scenario in takes into consideration a couple of factors, the size of your particles, right? You don’t want your particles to be any larger than about one inch in size, you start getting into the bigger, it’s the impact zone loan could cause some some damage and prematurely wear out the HDPE pipe. Is your are your is your slurry dropping into the pipe, right? And then if there’s a drop, or is it simply being piped into it, then the flow the velocity of that slurry line makes a big difference. Where if we want we want to laminar flow, right? You want it suspended flow running through there? Sure. That’s where the extreme performance of HDPE really, really shines. We’ve been I’ve seen slurry applications where they have to rotate that pipe every so often to get the the where point in a different area on the on the pipe. But most of the time we’re going to outperform steel with the with the right conditions.

Sean Moth  24:35

That makes sense. I guess the answer to there would be if you have a slurry application. Yes. HDPE is worth looking into no question about it. HDPE piping containing water can be frozen without rupture. How do we quantify the loss of strength from repetitive freestyle? That’s an interesting question. I I don’t know that you can specifically detail that. But I would think that maybe the answer is what preventative action would you take to try to keep that from happening repeatedly,

Garry Bouvet  25:01

right? That is a good question. I’ve never seen that one before. And but you’re right, there’s no real formulas or calculations that we can run to tell somebody what continuous freeze thaw we know of systems that that’s happening in right golf courses, for example, that, you know, don’t get all the water necessarily pumped out of their system. That’s one of the reasons they’re using HDPE pipe is because the water can freeze and there, once it starts buying and flowing, again, it’s back in service with no damage.

Sean Moth  25:39

I guess the idea too, is that the pipes not going to be absolutely teeming full to a point of expansion. You know, maybe if it’s half full or the residue there, it’s not going to cause problems. They also asked about fittings in terms of long radius elbows and tees and how they respond to freezing if there’s more damage to the fittings than with a straight section of pipe. And I would imagine the studies that show that the fittings and everything else, it’s all equally strike

Garry Bouvet  26:02

with a third polyethylene fittings, they’re going to fall into the same category, they’re all going to be just performed just as well as the pipe did. Their biggest issue is if you probably get them into some some non HDPE fittings, that’s where it can be critical. Sure.

Sean Moth  26:17

Finally, when it comes to attaching flanges to valves, if spaces are very limited, avoid the needed for spacers is designing with beveled flanges acceptable, and a good practice? I don’t know that that’s a little complicated again, they say I do see that on catalogs. Beveled flanges are not available at all sizes and all DRS is the manufacturing of the bevel the adapter flange is possible for any size, and any Dr. They’re also big fan of the webinars. So kudos on that one. But I guess we’re digging into beveled flanges and whether or not they’re acceptable and a good practice. Yes,

Garry Bouvet  26:50

you know, bevel fan flanges we we do we see that quite a bit when you’re working with, you know, butterfly valves and you’ve got that disc opening, that sometimes can protrude into the flange itself, you either need a valve spacer, you need to make room for that just to fully open. Sure. So bevel flanges are very common, and we see it however, we are limited into how much bevel that we can put into a flange how much material can be removed from the face of the flange? Right? So I think you referenced something in there about, you know, all sizes and all DRS, we’re going to be limited on how much we can take off on different DRS of flange adapters. That was something that we might want to dive a little bit deeper with our fabrication tech team, who actually do the beveling and make those fittings to help with But to answer the question in general terms, yes, we can do beveled in in just about any any size. But we do need to look at the Dr. We also want to look at the valve itself, okay, that they’re connecting to because every valve manufacturer is a little bit different, how much space is going to be needed to accommodate that that disc opening?

Sean Moth  28:08

Sure. And ironically, that’s a great point on the fabrication. You never know when a question like this is going to lead to the next great product. Great idea that comes with an innovation. Garry, thanks, first and foremost for all the webinar work that you do. But thanks again for giving us some time. And hopefully we answered a few more questions. Fantastic, Sean, always great to be with you. Thanks for having me. Our q&a podcast rolls along with Andy Rodgers, VP of sales. And he thanks for your time, we appreciate it. My pleasure. I guess I need to congratulate you too on the molded outlet T the webinar, you guys did some exciting new products. I know that it’s been a whirlwind for you guys. Yeah.

Andy Rodgers  28:39

And and all the credit is to our operations and product development team, they worked really hard at that they spent over a year on that on just get to reap the benefits of a very cool product that we’re excited to bring to the market.

Sean Moth  28:51

Good maybe down the road, just you and I can get together and do a podcast and talk a little more about that progress. But in the meantime, we’ve got a few questions from our listeners. And again, we’ve answered all these to the individuals but we want to share them publicly because it might be helpful to some other folks. And the first question, what’s the best configuration for a dual containment inspection port?

Andy Rodgers  29:09

Okay, that was tricky, because there’s a lot of options. And that’s a that’s a vague question. But we obviously work a lot with dual containment and inspection ports themselves are usually areas where the end user wants to be able to identify a leak, right? So we see all sorts of inspection risers, and most of the time, they’re either obviously coming directly off the dual containment pipe at a low point, or they can even come off a structure. But I think the key there is the client has to determine where the low points are in the system. And at those low points, you have to develop a solution that’s going to help you in the field identify if and when there’s a leak and what to do so a lot of times we’ll branch directly off the bottom of dual containment pipe and we’ll curve it around and daylight at the top. We have dual containment inspection ports that we use on dual containment stuff rupture. So in the annular space, we actually build a riser so that you can access that riser and detect if liquid had escaped the primary barrel and gone into the containment. So it’s all about identifying the low points and how to access them. But even then, we see a lot of ways to terminate that line. So we’ll see a blind flange. We’ll see cleanout risers, we’ll see cam locks, we’ll see transition fittings, sample ports, you name it. So there’s really no single answer to that. I think the important part of that is low point identification, and then engage with us on the different ways to terminate that pipe so that you can success successfully identify in the field,

Sean Moth  30:37

obviously, you hear why we’re talking to Andy on this subject. And it’s clear that if you do have further questions, you can reach out to he and his team. Question number two, is HDPE. Appropriate for long term solution for secondary containment drainage piping? This is a multi part question. I guess we’ll just kind of start with that one. Yeah, I

Andy Rodgers  30:53

think that question was geared a little bit towards maybe the media that would be flowing through it. HDPE is a very robust material, I can’t speak to all the different types of media that would be flowing through it, because there’s there’s all sorts of possibilities. But what I can tell you is that it has been used in some of the most harsh environments imaginable for decades, and I’m talking about landfills. I’m talking about the bottoms of landfills, I’m talking about leech aid. I’m talking about chemical waste, special waste, and the fact that it’s sustained its integrity for that long. There’s really very little from a media or liquid perspective that you can throw at HDPE that it can’t not only work for, but also provide long term corrosion resistance to

Sean Moth  31:40

Yeah, I guess that’s why when you go to the store and buy a thing of bleach, it’s in an HDPE container. I mean, it’s pretty logical.

Andy Rodgers  31:47

It is yeah, if you read the fine print and all that all that stuff is stored in HDPE. That’s a good point, look for that

Sean Moth  31:52

number to working with landfill gas collection system using HDPE pipe for vertical and horizontal connections, found a document that makes comparison between PVC and HDPE pipes that gets them worried. So maybe you can avert their cautions, maybe you can clarify their their their fears.

Andy Rodgers  32:10

Yeah, this is a an age old question in the landfill industry and really that answer the solution between PVC and HDPE, we really still see a split. The there are pros and cons to both. If you bury a vertical gas well and use HDPE. There, it’s flexible, it will bend and move with the settlement of the landfill. But there is a point to which the material can actually bend to a point of kink edge. So an HDPE pipe eventually, if it’s enough pressure or settlement can kink. But at the same time, if if there’s enough pressure on a PVC pipe, it’ll actually shear and break. So it becomes kind of a pick your poison scenario, no matter what if you have a pump down one of those walls made of HDPE or PVC, you’re going to lose it, the difference being if HDPE would have been in kink, the actual pathway for the landfill gas, let’s say like a gas conduit, it’s actually it’s done. However, if a PVC pipe shears and breaks, it can still serve as a conduit for the gas. Now, people overcome this with HDPE by using a lower Dr or a thicker wall. People also just they go back and forth, we see clients that will use PVC, and then we’ll use HDPE. Now HDPE, even in a Dr. Levin is cheaper than a schedule 80 PVC. But it’s I don’t think it’s our spot to tell people use this or use this. I’m just it’s my job, I guess to share what I see nationally across the country, and it truly is a mixture. Now if you’re talking about horizontal wells, we almost always see HDPE. And that’s because the settlement issue underground is it’s not as extreme. So it’s they both have their their benefits. They both have their, you know, their faults. Yeah. And but overall, it’s it’s still a good mixture. And it’s really a site specific decision that engineers and consultants have to make. And

Sean Moth  34:09

to be clear, it is go we specialize in HDPE. But there’s certainly applications that call for other solutions that maybe work a different way or maybe make a client at ease or happier with with working with another with another piece of pipe. Yeah,

Andy Rodgers  34:21

and you know, we don’t try and force anything to the client. And that’s exactly why we stopped both when we stopped by the schedule 80, PVC and HDPE and solid and perforated pipe because we know that that choice exists. We know that there’s a very balanced mixture out across the country, and we’re just prepared to be there to offer the solution to the client.

Sean Moth  34:40

Absolutely. A couple more left to how do we deal with sloped pipes? Is the pipe just pulled after the fitting or is there slight angles that can be incorporated during the fusion process? That’s

Andy Rodgers  34:50

a great question. It’s something I deal with a lot because I also manage our estimating group. So when you have HDPE pipe that’s on let’s say a base and an needs to go up a slope, you may think that an elbow is required, it’s not always required, because like we talked about earlier, HDPE is very flexible, it can bend, there is a term called the minimum bend radius of HDPE. And there’s an equation that you can use, depending on the thickness of the pipe. And you can determine how much you can bend that pipe before it actually will kink or buckle.

Sean Moth  35:23

Yeah, one of our questions actually Will Vodak earlier in the podcast answered that question. So that’s fascinating that these are tied together now. Yeah.

Andy Rodgers  35:28

So sometimes you can just bend the pipe up the slope, it depends on what’s required for the project. If that’s not an option, yes, you can make angled fusions in the field with mitered inserts in the fusion machine. We don’t see that as much as we do people just relying on us to provide an elbow an elbow of whatever degree now we have standard degrees, think 9045 22. But we can make just about any angle possible if it’s a custom application. So if we have to make a 14 and a half degree elbow for a certain slope, then we can do that. So there’s options there. Understand minimum bend radius, understand mitered inserts in the field for fusion and understand the availability of any angle possible on an HDPE fabricated lol by ISCO. Cool,

Sean Moth  36:13

there we go with the SLO pipe answer. Finally, there was a question that is a little vague, but they just wanted to know about Dr. Ratings used for lift stations.

Andy Rodgers  36:21

Okay, so lift stations is a very broad term, I’m gonna relate it to just structures in general, we build a lot of HDPE structures, and most of them are buried. So when an HDPE structure is buried, you have to consider the thickness of the wall and it has to be strong enough so that it does not buckle. Sure there is an ASTM standard ASTM 1759. And we assist clients with those calculations all the time that ASTM is specifically written to help determine the thickness of the HDPE wall to be used in a buried application. Now, if someone reaches out to us for that information, we’re going to come back and ask a lot of questions. We need information like the temperature, the pressure or the water table. So as long as our clients can provide that information up front ISCO has a service and our technical group that we do offer, we do sample calculations for the client, return it to them and say you need at least a Dr. 11 pipe in this sort of burial depth of this application.

Sean Moth  37:18

Makes sense. Basically, what it boils down to is an equation and ultimately we want to go safe. We want to go efficient, we want to do best for the client. That’s right. All right, Andy, really appreciate your time. And like I said, we’ll look forward to talking to you down the road. Thanks, John. That will wrap up our q&a podcast, I want to thank all of our guests that came on and shared their knowledge as you can hear just a wide breadth of knowledge, and very few questions that can’t be answered. And if there is something that happens to maybe stumped the team, then they will find resources to grab an answer and get that to you. So we recommend that if you have any more specific questions, you can either reach out to us via phone call, you can go to our website, or you can send us an email insights at ISCO dash pipe.com. It’s been a pleasure. And again, thanks to all of our guests for helping out. We’ll talk to you next time on ISCO insights the podcast