Todd Grafenauer, Educational Director for Murphy Pipeline Contractors joins our host to give a contractor’s perspective on the use of HDPE piping solutions in municipal applications. He discusses everything from the advantages of HDPE, the trenchless technology that allows low-impact installation methods, the future of HDPE and what advances may be on the horizon and everything in-between.

Sean Moth  00:00

Welcome back to insights podcast. My name is Sean moth. Great to have you along as always on ISCOs podcast and we’re thrilled to be joined by educational director at Murphy pipeline contractors, Todd Grafenauer, Todd, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

Todd Grafenauer  00:13

Sean, Great to be here.

Sean Moth  00:14

It’s been a whirlwind for you. We’re really putting you through the wringer. But we’re gonna, you’re gonna be a man of many mediums. And so we’ll we’ll add a podcast to it. Let’s start with the 30,000 foot view cliffnotes of your path to what you’re doing now, whether that involves where you grew up what your folks did just kind of in general. How did you get here?

Todd Grafenauer  00:31

Yeah, so I heard a guy called the British Bulldog, who was coming across the pond. This was 23, four years ago. It turned out to be Annie Mayer, who’s the president of Murphy Pipeliner I knew at the time, and he had been using hammerheads equipment a little bit. I knew the VP of sales over there, a guy by the name of Jeff wage, who is still in the industry. And Jeff said, Look, you, Todd, you gotta go meet this guy. down in Florida. He’s trying to revolutionize trenchless technology, which I didn’t even know sure what that was at the time with you. And so I went down to meet Andy went down to one of his job sites, and it blew me away. Not only the technology, polyethylene, the entire process. But also Andy, you know, Andy is a dynamic leader, he’s somebody that, you know, is so appropriate to lead our company. And, you know, it made sense to join him to join his cause for the industry and 20. Some plus years later, here we are sitting in a sweet sound. ISCOs industry?

Sean Moth  01:37

Yeah, kind of like on Get Smart. The silence? Yeah. So kind of that points toward the whole, the European discovery of HDPE, and how we’re somehow 20 or 30 years behind them. I guess it’s a blessing there were people like him to come across and bring it to us.

Todd Grafenauer  01:52

Absolutely. A lot of the issues I think that we face, you know, you look at the AC issue here in America, where a lot of states allow us to pipe burst AC pipe, some states might have some questions on it. What’s fascinating is the UK water industry went through this 15 years ago. And they allow you to burst AC pipe, and then they also have all the documentation on why. But here, you know, in the US, well, we have to do that all over again, you know, so it’s not only an AC issue, but you look at the technology that’s come over the the advancements in resins, that’s come over, you know, some of the leading manufacturers of polyethylene, and the methods and the processes come over. So we’re very fortunate here to be in the US and have almost a Big Brother, if you will, especially with their old infrastructure. They’ve obviously been dealing with this for a while. So I think there’s definitely Lessons Learned infrastructure

Sean Moth  02:45

is a great segue. And I feel like we almost need to have somebody that just Google’s water main breaks, and start going to these municipalities, because every single day, you’re seeing another one, Legacy piping systems are failing. That’s a fact. What level of urgency is there? Because it feels like it’s getting to a critical point in terms of lifespan that it’s gonna get worse and worse, it’s kind of snowball,

Todd Grafenauer  03:11

right? Well, let’s put it this way. Do we want to go back to a third world country? Because if we don’t have our infrastructure in place, that is the potential, you know, look at what happened in Jackson, Mississippi, when there was no water, there was no wastewater. That’s a third world country that we actually have the potential to go back to now. I don’t believe we’ll get there. I believe, you know, in America that we’re gonna solve this crisis, but it is a crisis.

Sean Moth  03:39

What What’s the reluctance to move away from Legacy materials? Because I always joke with people. I’m only been in this industry for a little over a year. But I mean, we used to push water through hollowed out logs, we had obviously advanced from something to another thing. Why why are we so reluctant to take the next step? Yeah.

Todd Grafenauer  03:55

You know, I think there’s a lot of different reasons, you know, some great examples would be you look at some communities, you know, Jacksonville is a great example that always believed they would never use polyethylene. In that case, they needed a changing of the guard, they needed some younger engineers to come in to look at other options and that’s what happened other places it’s more political politics, you know, we try to stay away from that. But here’s the good news. You know, some of the largest water and sewer programs in the US right now. We see the mayor’s we see utility public works director that are they’re asking their staff look, we know why water mains fail, right? You we look to a WWE water Research Foundation. We know that water mains fail because of corrosion, ground move and fatigue. So they’re they’re almost demanding their staff to let’s find a solution. Let’s solve why these three reasons fail and so it doesn’t happen in the future. And we’ve seen the has large programs reach out and starting to use polyethylene for that specific reason. So

Sean Moth  05:06

it’s almost like these people that still have a home phone are making decisions. I mean, there’s so many technologies that have moved. And this one seems reluctant. What role does budgeting play? Is there? Is there a case where there’s a lot of municipalities that would probably jump at the opportunity to convert exclusively to HDPE. But it’s a financial thing, right? I mean, 100%

Todd Grafenauer  05:25

budgeting is everything. You know, we’re we live in a low bid environment. So that means if we’re a penny more, using trenchless, with HDPE, even though we’re going to double their design life, and the some other contractors putting PVC pipe in the ground, we lose, we lose that bid.

Sean Moth  05:44

But Isn’t that ironic, because they’ve spent how many 1000s and hundreds of 1000s of dollars for years, fixing a leak here fixing a leak, they’re replacing this coupler, that type of thing. I mean, it seems ironic to me that money really isn’t a concern. It’s pushing it off on the next guy.

Todd Grafenauer  05:59

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And to fill those up, you know, overtime budgets, maybe. Who knows? Well,

Sean Moth  06:06

I mean, you got staff members that are paid to repair pipe, right. i It seems like it’s, I know, you need certified technicians to do the welding. But we trained I know, I’m sure you have plenty of training opportunities. It’s not hard. No,

Todd Grafenauer  06:19

it really isn’t now. So you talk about that? How would they have, you know, repair people to that are trained to repair pipe, there are some starting to be some really good examples in the industry. If you look at saws, what’s going on down there, they have a really large operations and maintenance program, who’s led very, very smart, younger engineer, who, if they see so many breaks on a street, they’ve actually purchased static pipe or sitting equipment, they know how to fuse it in house, they’ll actually just go out and burst at 500 feet now, you know, that’s innovative, that is a an actual potential solution to, you know, the situation that we face. And I

Sean Moth  06:58

feel like the the pointing of problems with the thermoplastic pipes are such a rare and well, this one time at this one place, when there’s just 1000s and 1000s of applications. I know you’re you’re primarily municipal, but you know, we deal with mining industries, we deal with pulp and paper we deal with, you know, all these applications, golf irrigation is kind of the roots of the industry. So it seems ironic that it still has that that reluctance to move forward. Your perspective on the positives, the advantages of HDPE because we explore, you know, the leak free the flexibility. There’s so many of them, but for your sake, and for your applications, what what are the best advantages?

Todd Grafenauer  07:36

Yeah, so from us from a contractor’s perspective, you would be constructability. You know, when you’re on a jobsite, you have to have a piping system that’s highly flexible, big bend radius. Yeah, you need a piping system that has a high impact strength with ductility and toughness to it. The other advantage we have from a contractor’s perspective is we’ve tried other piping systems. Sure, with trenchless. I’m not going to name but you know, we don’t get into the game where we want to put anything down. But we’ve tried almost every other potential solution that you could install with trenchless, pipe bursting slip lining, and they didn’t work. So you know, we are gotten to the point where they’re a company where we’re 100% exclusive with HDPE. You know, if a client wants to use another piping system, we wish them the best of luck. Yeah,

Sean Moth  08:22

yeah. And we do the same thing. And I think that people don’t understand what it would they think we’re like the drug dealer on the corner where we’re pushing it now. It’s the right thing to do most of the time. But there are some applications where there are better ways you touched on installation methods. I’m familiar with pipe bursting. I’m familiar with slip lining, no compression fits another facet. That’s when I really don’t know anything about maybe you can just touch on each of those three but primarily compression fit because I think we’ve talked about the other two.

Todd Grafenauer  08:48

Yeah, when we talk about compression fit, it’s easy to compare that method to slip line Excel slip lining, you have typically a smaller size pipe that can easily be pushed or pulled into the existing host pipe 30 inch cast iron water transmission main you could easily slip line with a brand new 24 inch. The one potential disadvantage with slip lining is you’re going to reduce the final ID so thus reducing flow and capacitor. Very early on in the design process. I think it’s important that a community run their flow calcs to understand if slip lining, gets them what they want with the final ID Great, that’s going to be the best solution. For many clients with transmission mains. due to population growth, they need to maximize that final ID maximize flow maximize capacity, that’s where really the value of compression fit would come. And really what that same 30 inch example, we would actually select an HDPE with an outside diameter slightly larger than the ID of the host pipe to be replaced. Okay, so we would select something like a 32 inch HDPE pipe to replace a 30 inch. How do you pull a bigger pipe, smaller pipe immediately before it’s pulled through? We pass it through a sink Go reduction dive. So we’re simply going to reduce the diameter, keep it under tension, and it remains in its reduced state. And after we make the complete pole with, which is usually 1000 2000 feet, take the pulling force off, and that HDPE naturally expands to go back to its way. Yeah. 100% Yeah. And we stayed within the natural elasticity of the material. So it always forms that tight compression fit,

Sean Moth  10:24

because it’s kind of the same concept as the squeeze tool when you’re doing some sort of exactly. And I would imagine that kind of eliminates annular space and any problems that you might experience with that was slip lining that is that been the experience? Correct.

Todd Grafenauer  10:35

So you’re, you’re going to be left with a tight compression fit no annular space or no ground.

Sean Moth  10:40

And you touched on population increase, because I know in a lot of cases, if your pipe bursting, you know, or slip lining, that smooth interior gives you a better flow rate, even though it’s a smaller diameter, but you got to think ahead. And that’s a great part of the problem.

Todd Grafenauer  10:54

That’s a great point. Yeah, with polyethylene see factor being 150. The day it’s installed, also in 100 years from now. Yeah, you know, we replace cast iron and ductile iron transmission mains, we’re see factors around 70, sometimes even worse. So with compression fit, most of our clients actually see an increase, and

Sean Moth  11:12

I love it to people, like 100 years come on, and I say they’re, like proven. So give us 30 years, hasn’t been around 100 years. Right. I mean, that, you know, and that’s why we say, conservatively in some cases, 100 years, because we know that it can and I know I’ve watched this study in Germany where they would recycle HDP and make trash containers and, and that’s how they evaluate the life. But it’s been proven that some systems don’t have that life. And it’s been proven that HDPE does. And I guess it makes the reluctance. puzzling. You

Todd Grafenauer  11:43

know, even in the UK, as we touched on earlier in the UK, they have they actually extracted some polyethylene, they put in 40 years ago, to analyze the molecular structure and try to figure out okay, well, how much design life do we have on it. So now they’re estimating what they just took out of the ground is going to get them another 100 year. So that means that’s 140 year piping system that they have in the ground, we truly don’t know, you look at the pen test that goes out so many years now, it is possible to get hundreds of years on this piping system.

Sean Moth  12:15

And that’s probably a resin that’s maybe not as advanced as what we’re creating Now isn’t that the trips can even have a longer life. So that’s fascinating. Richard brand is somebody I’ve talked to in East Windsor, New Jersey, I don’t know if you’ve crossed paths with him. Duluth, Minnesota I know is kind of a poster child. And I think it’s a Lago Vista, Texas, that was kind of one of the first or second cities to convert, how important are places like that, to serve as an example, and to show that it can be done

Todd Grafenauer  12:42

absolute champions, they really are, you know, I mean, we do so much work in Florida, just as an example. And you need that regional powerhouse to putting the putting pipe in the ground, to use leading these technologies. And that’s what happens is a smaller communities around them want to come and visit want to watch the technology so that it’s almost that Big Brother approach. Arlington, Texas is another great example, tap on Miami, you know, all these bigger cities are serving as champions for this industry. Now fascinating.

Sean Moth  13:14

You said you don’t want to say any negative stuff about the other guys. I wish the other guys could say that about us. Is there a negative campaign being waged waged against thermoplastics? Is there that plastic stigma that’s still out there for some of these old guys with with House phones that want to convince you that is plastic and it’s terrible for you? Right? This

Todd Grafenauer  13:32

is not your great grandfather’s piping system. Right. And they’re still waging that war, they want to absolutely they are every day, you know, again, that’s why I brought that up in the beginning, we’d like to stay away from it. You know, I hope that some of the design engineers see those campaigns, and would be smart enough to realize where that’s actually coming from. That’s what I love about our industry, right? I mean, you’ve seen people in our industry, the polyethylene world, that once they come, they don’t leave, because they believe in what we’re doing. That’s one of the reasons why I fell in love with this 20 plus years ago, and you can get beat when you can get behind the product and make that a career. You know, I’d love to see there. The other guys, you know, career spans, I’m sure they’re a lot shorter. Because, you know, we believe in what we’re doing. So that’s why you see the 3040 year career lifespans, because it’s that powerful. Yeah, it’s

Sean Moth  14:26

an interesting point, because I, I’m a very logical person. So when I hear that, you know, it has a high resistance to corrosive materials, and somebody says, Well, when you buy Clorox on the shelf, it’s in a bottle made out of HDPE I go on, it makes a lot of sense. And you know, when your child has a sippy cup, that they’re drinking water and juice out of every single day, and that’s made of HDPE it’s probably pretty safe. So it’s just puzzling to me that these stigmas this war can still be waged, so So I guess ultimately in your title is educational director who needs to be educated? Is it the job? General public engineering students and professors of the maybe the collegiate level isn’t municipal leaders. Do you have a rankings? Do you have a Mount Rushmore of who we need to educate? Because in the back of my mind, I’m starting to wonder, do we just need to start paying for commercials to run during big time sporting events that say this is really working? And go? People are? Wonder what that is? And yeah, get a wavelength with what’s that? What’s that? Timeline? What’s that attack?

Todd Grafenauer  15:25

That would be an awesome, awesome thing to do for this industry? Yeah, right. You know, I mean, we do some PSA announcements, if you will, sure. You know, little things from, you know, your cell phone bill cost $80, but are actually 100 plus dollar, but our water bills are 2040 $50. You know, so what’s really important here, you know, traditionally, from an educational standpoint, though, we start at the city level, they’re the ultimately the ones that are making these decisions. But there is definitely a gap with students with, you know, in these universities. We I was at the trenchless technology show a couple of weeks ago in Providence, Rhode Island. And we had a number of students that came to visit the PPI booth, where we were running compression fit demos, and we had that conversation. Do you know anything about polyethylene? Do you know anything about trenchless, and they really didn’t. So it was great that they were at the show. But that may be a potential solution to start educating these engineers at a much younger age. Against every, anytime we get a student engineer, we say go out in the field and actually get a job for a contractor for a year or two, to actually get some field experience. And that’s where I think they may start picking up an opportunity on how does polyethylene actually work in the field versus other piping systems. And then design engineers we also spend a lot of time with, but I love the public. The public education

Sean Moth  16:52

well in the thought process for me is that if the general public sees the watermain leaks, understands why they’re leaking, and understands what they could do, so that they don’t leak anymore, and document how much money has been spent, versus how much can be spent. And for the future. And in this world of sustainability being so important to so many people. It feels like if enough taxpayers knew where their money was going, and where it could be going, that there might be a little bit of a wave of, hey, why aren’t we doing this? And I know we kind of live in a world where we’re very reactionary, and maybe you and I need to brainstorm a perfect tic toc. I don’t even know I don’t know these answers. But but that feels like one of the cases. I’m also very curious about, you mentioned the students. How about the professor’s? Because sometimes I feel like maybe those are the nieces and nephews of our legacy piping system, people and there’s a reluctance to teach something they don’t even know do we need to get to those? Do we need seminars for collegiate engineering professors to understand the product and how it works? Yeah,

Todd Grafenauer  17:53

that that it’s an absolutely great point, you know, on a very small scale, we’re doing that the PPI has a municipal Advisory Board, where they do have four or five different universities. So those professors do come to our semi annual meetings, they go back and educate their students on that. But that’s just a very small scale. I think that’s a phenomenal idea. Now, you also touched on a Tiktok. Yeah, you know, so one of the things that we do, you know, through social media, which I know is gonna does a phenomenal job with as well, is not necessarily, you know, when you look at LinkedIn, LinkedIn is going to be where we’re approaching and educating cities and civil engineers, people that are going to make a decision in the next few months, years. But on the Instagram side, on the TIC tock site, we spent a lot of time on Instagram, where our audience is 18 to 30 year olds, and everything is HDPE. related. So I’m, you know, maybe that’s another thing where this industry can get more involved with, on a younger level. We don’t do tic tac, but let’s go well,

Sean Moth  19:03

yeah, and I’m the same way I do oversee our social media, we haven’t done the TIC tock thing, mainly because it’s almost like HDPE to a legacy piping person. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be willing to see what it can do. But you bring up an interesting point, because it’s really interesting to see how different posts perform on the different platforms, because between LinkedIn, and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, they have very different audiences. They have very different impacts. And yeah, it it’s a challenge, but it’s kind of a fun challenge. Maybe that’s what the future answer is speaking of the future. What do you see in terms of advancement? I don’t know how much you deal with PERT. But do we see higher temperatures being able to be pushed through HDPE? Do we see new residents do we see new installation methods? I know that talking with Mike James big pipe. Bigger, bigger, but he used to be 36 was big now it’s 62 and it’s getting huge. What do you see as the future for HDPE?

Todd Grafenauer  19:58

Yeah, you know part of that equation is definitely large diameter. You know, we started to see that, you know, 20 years ago, a lot of these municipalities were really addressing their distribution replacement. Starting in about 2007 2008. For the first time, we started seeing transmission, main replacement prod programs. And that’s where we got more heavily involved with compression fed. The challenge back then, though, was the equipment that was available was the size of HDPE. Today in the industry, there’s nothing left we have the equipment, we have the size of polyethylene. So those are all potential projects. Absolutely. Resin advancements, you know, with, with the old suede lining, or we call it compression fit, we don’t get into the, the some of the Pete’s, or the perks that you mentioned, but Pa 11 Pa 12 Sure, some of the vinyl stuff have been used for compression fed, because they’ve been used for offshore applications, high, very high temperatures, very aggressive fluids, not really applicable in our world on the municipal side, really just due to costs. But obviously, we’re on the fourth generation resin now for HDPE. The fifth generation is going to happen, you know, I’m sure it’s in development. I, you know, I’m not, I don’t get privy to those insider secret.

Sean Moth  21:16

But but to that point, I know that there was a stigma about how some of the chemicals that are put into potable water, were doing some damage to HDPE. And of course, other piping system, people said, No, you can’t do it. And then I just hit the CC three, you know, compounds they put in the resin that makes it okay, I’m assuming those advances are gonna continue to grow as well. Yeah.

Todd Grafenauer  21:35

And that’s another reason why I love this industry, right? Everything I don’t, again, we’re construction. So in construction, things can and will go wrong. Every piping system process contractor is going to fail at one point another. Anything that we’ve seen for polyethylene, whether it be you know, slow crack growth resistant, while now we went from the third generation, the fourth generation to solve that issue. Will chlorine failures. Yeah, well, okay, they were on one in service lines exposed to the sun stagnant lines, not really applicable. But okay, let’s just say that let’s come up with how do we protect all polyethylene going forward? So now we have CC three, so it’s not an issue anymore? So that’s another reason why this industry is second to none, in my opinion, because if there have been challenges, let’s get behind it, address it and move on,

Sean Moth  22:25

you bring up a great point. It’s almost like you’re standing and taking criticisms, instead of deflecting, you’re saying, here’s what we did, right? That is no longer valid. Right, next, exactly. And it reminds me too, of what some of our fabrication guys do, too, you know, a customer will draw something on a napkin and say, I need something that’s kind of like this. That’s when our design team can thrive. And that’s how, you know, we come up with a new mold that outlet tea or some of these new concepts and that so I think it’s the mindset of HDP is the new material. And I think there’s a willingness to continue that newness. And I think that’s, as you said, is what makes it great time we need to get to your flight, we need to get you to a restful evening of assuming, and maybe a nice meal. But I can’t thank you enough for your time and your wisdom. I really do enjoy looking at your posts on social. So if you don’t follow along, take a look especially I see him on LinkedIn all the time, just phenomenal videos, just showing just how disastrous some of those pipes that are being replaced are sorry, I’ll say the bad things. You don’t have to. But keep educating. Keep up the great work. And again, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate

Todd Grafenauer  23:28

you appreciate this go everything that you guys are doing from an educational standpoint. So thank you. Well, let’s

Sean Moth  23:33

keep it going and Todd Graf in our guest. If you have any questions for us, please send them our way insights at ISCO dash pipe.com. We certainly appreciate you joining us and we’ll talk to you next time on ISCO’s podcast. See you next time.