Uncover the sustainable and superior advantages of PE-RT pipe for your high-temperature, pressurized applications.

Industrial, district heating, and more — we’re covering the power of PE-RT for a wide range of high-temperature piping applications.

Discover PE-RT’s:

• Unmatched thermal resistance
• Superior strength and durability
• Chemical compatibility
• Easy installation and maintenance
• Cost-effectiveness and longevity

Will Vodak 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of ISCO insights, my name is still Will Vodak here as your host excited to be back with you for another round of HDPE education. Today, we got a great topic. And thank you all so much for joining us. Let’s go ahead bear and pull these instructions up for everybody. First, your audio and video are turned off to enhance our quality and to avoid distractions. If you have any feedback for zoom issues, or troubleshooting zoom, and still haven’t figured out how to use Zoom, God bless you. Please use that chat box, we will do our very best to answer and help out in real time. But most importantly, is the q&a tab there. You’ll see that that tab down below please go ahead and send those q&a questions in on any topic related to HDPE or Garry here to talk about life. And we’ll answer as best we can. We have one of the industry’s best and brightest and Timmy Tipton behind the desk here. Answering questions live on air. And last but certainly not least you have myself and a brand new headshot from Garry Bouvet about it’s about time. Garry, welcome back to the world. Great

Garry 

to be here. Yeah, we needed a new headshot there. I think my previous one had the burqa. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

it was from around the 70s. I think first one was so we I thought we had a poll question which is read Garry’s new headshot one to 10. But I guess we don’t have that. It’s all 10. It’s all tense. All kidding aside, Garry, who are you? And why should people listen to you today? Again,

Garry 

Garry Bouvet, ISCO. Industries just celebrated my 26th year here it is go well, thank you very much. It just means I’m getting a lot older. I’m project manager get involved in a lot of different things, especially projects. primary focus right now is obviously the topic we’re talking about today, high temperature polyethylene pipe, but anything associated with HDPE training, education. Really, that’s kind of what I spend most of my time doing now.

Will Vodak 

You’ve done a lot of roles for ISCO. And that’s why we come to you for all the knowledge. So thanks for being here with us today. I’d like to ask our audience a quick question here. And this is going to be our first poll question of the day. Just to get a sense of who all is here on this presentation. Is when did you last spec in high temperature pressurized pipe? Was it in the last week? You haven’t done it for a while? Or you’ve met you’ve never expected anyways? This? These are all our poll questions here. Please go ahead and answer those to the best of your ability. I know we have a wide range of individuals on today’s program. Yeah, I

Garry 

think it’ll be across the board. We’ll I don’t think it’ll be one one way or the other.

Will Vodak 

Yep. And it looks like not about 60% of everybody answering has not spec’d in high temperature HDPE. So we’re excited that you’re joining us. So let’s dive right into it. We got a lot to cover today, Garry. The first is, what’s our topic? What are we PE RT? What the heck is this?

Garry 

Well, that’s great stands. It’s an acronym standing for polyethylene raised temperature. And we’re gonna dive into more about the differences between standard or conventional HDPE pipe and this high temperature per pipe that we’re going to spend a lot of time on.

Will Vodak 

Sure. And you’ve been working with this product now for how long this? This is not a new product. I mean, it’s been out for a bit now. It’s

Garry 

new in general terms, but it’s been out here in the US about seven years. And I’ve been involved pretty much from day one, right? Yeah. Fantastic.

Will Vodak 

So Garry, let’s go ahead and get started this. When I first came into the industry, I’d never thought about pipe. Right? You just never thought about how things were transported from one place to another. And then you learn that this is how we’ve done it. Since you were born in the early 1900s. This is this is just crazy. We have pipe that is so old, decaying, corroded, corroded. I mean, this is a huge problem. And we continue to put the same pipe that failed in the first place back into the system. Tell me what you feel about that. Yeah,

Garry 

I mean, we’re all creatures of habit, right? Well, and you know, engineering and design is no different. And we see metal pipes has kind of always been the traditional materials. And you said earlier that, you know, these are all old pipes, but that may not necessarily be the case. Some of these, you know, can this corrosion that we deal with can occur very rapidly, depending on the situation and, and what’s flowing through the particular pipe. But we spend billions of dollars every year trying to prevent in either repairing or preventing this type of corrosion, which is naturally going to occur with metal pipe

Will Vodak 

sir, over the lifecycle. And that’s why I always get a kick out of when we’re asked to compare HDPE and ductile iron IDs. And then we see this 10 years later it to me, it’s you know, I think there’s a better way to do it. So we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe some ways that that could be done today. This is a huge problem that we’re facing. I know The infrastructure bill has injected a lot of money into the, into the industry in terms of being able to fix some of this stuff. So I think we’re our main goal here is to educate on what the options are out there for replace Yeah, and some

Garry 

of this will, you know, this historical usage of, of metal pipes, you know, comes down to what used to run through it, right? That is changing within the industry as well, right? We’re seeing heating and cooling, using, you know, hot water instead of steam and where polyethylene wouldn’t be a good choice. Thermal plastics would not be a good choice for Steam, it’s a perfect choice for how water application

Will Vodak 

innovation keeps driving. Absolutely. So it will never stop. So I think in the past, the starting logical starting point is let’s go with a usable plastic here. Now we’ve got this great new product called HDPE. It’s got all these fantastic features of benefits, pros, you know, maybe a con or two we’ll touch here in a bit. But once you start with the pros here, why are people switching to HDPE from like, ductile iron, carbon steel, traditional

Garry 

metallic, right? This as opposed to the PERT pipe, this is not a new product. This has been around since the mid 50s, when it was invented. So this is not new, although it may be new to some in our audience. But some of the key features that polyethylene brings in general fusible creating a monolithic piping system, when you put 1000 foot of pipe together, it’s 1000 foot piece of pipe, no joints, nothing to come apart, nothing to leak, right, right? Zero leakage, right, the big another big one. You can the way you can construct it, open cut, less trench applications like pipe bursting directional drilling, your design life is over 100 years, you’re not getting that on any metal pipes, in some cases conservatively on your 100 years, right, I

Will Vodak 

just don’t know.

Garry 

We can connect to any existing piping system, there’s different methods for doing that. transitions to other materials. Sure. And the sizes keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Will Vodak 

We almost have too many options. We’ve got IPs, we’ve got dips, we’ve got purple, blue, green, yellow stripe, we’ve got you know, if you can draw, we can build it. So I think this is a reason why HDPE has been a solution. And talk to us more about some of the features and benefits that make it that way, notably, flexibility, corrosion resistance, UV protection, and more.

Garry 

Right, you’ve touched on a couple of the primary ones, right traditional or standard HDPE goes to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, down to minus 40. So a wide temperature range for HDPE pipe, the burst strength of the material is four times the operating or working pressure of the pipe, the hydraulic efficiency, that earlier slide you showed on a metal pipe with all the burden dilation, right, not an issue with HDPE pipe doesn’t happen. So that hydraulic efficiency is from day one to 100 years from now, it’s still the same, right? You have all the AW wa approvals, anything that’s necessary for the different mediums that you might be flowing through the material. As far as the physical characteristics, lighter weight, easier to work with maybe less equipment required on a job site, the flexibility you talked about that really assists in some of the installation methods that are available, that can be done with polyethylene, it’s really are impossible to do with other materials. The UV protection if you want to relay that pipe above ground, no reduction in life, no UV issues, contamination, their fatigue and surge tolerant about four times it’s working pressure, that’s a huge safety factor, seismic flexibility, we’re seeing more and more of that as it’s ground shifts and movements, right. We’re not because we’re one continuous piece of pipe when I fused, nothing to come apart. Sure.

Will Vodak 

All of these and more Garry are really a reason why I mean, we’ve seen such a dramatic increase in HDPE projects, especially over the last couple of years where material availability with some of the competing materials wasn’t as good pricing wasn’t as good HDPE looks finally like a a more attractive option at least from just a, you know, a cost standpoint. Right? And now people have tried it and they’re using it on a now a project by project basis for water, wastewater and others. There is one thing that we do need to talk about though, and that is heat, right? So HDPE is a great solution. For a lot of projects out there. Not so great solution for projects above one 40 out there.

Garry 

So let’s talk about that. Yeah, that, you know, everything has its limits. And standard HDPE pipe has a temperature limit for pressure applications up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. And even above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you see here on this table, this chart, it actually gives you a temperature compensation multiplier, meaning that we have to kind of derail the pressure capabilities of the polyethylene as the temperatures continue to increase up to a not exceeding 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So there if we go 240, you can see it’s a point six multiplier. So that VR 11 pipe, it’s rated for 200 psi, at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, is now rated for only 120 psi, pressure, right? So and once we get above 140, we technically can’t do it, right, that pipe, that elevated temperature. And

Will Vodak 

Garry, why is that is it just from from a chemical standpoint, with the plastics, it just gets to a point where the heat and the pressure is too much for the HDP to rebound from?

Garry 

Well, anything with thermal plastic is susceptible to temperature, the higher the yield, the softer, the more viscous more fluid that material becomes. And that’s really just where the limits where the testing and applications have stopped. And that’s when you know, when we start talking about pert, that’s the window that hurt brings the advantage back to thermoplastic pipe. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

absolutely. Everyone. I really appreciate the questions on here. Garry, let’s take just a moment to answer some of these just about HDPE features and benefits and do HDPE fittings and water systems need to be restrained? Or is Butt-fusion sufficient? Great question.

Garry 

Fantastic question. The neat thing about the entire fusion joining process for polyethylene is that all of those fittings, if they are both fuse do not require any type of restraint. Again, it’s just like the lengths of pipe that fusion is one continuous material from fittings or pipe to pipe. So the no restraint is required there. So

Will Vodak 

also talking about expansion and contraction is expansion and contraction of HDPE. How do you do you need expansion loops? Do you need expansion fittings?

Garry 

What is the most generic answer there that we can give? This kind of depends on a couple of minutes, not sure there’s a generic answer. But to answer the question, typically, we do not need any type of restraints or expansion loops. Now, there may be requirements for some when we transition to other materials intermittently, right, going back to a traditional metal pipe, and or a bell and spigot ductile iron, those are not restrain themselves. Wire or the polyethylene is but that transition point, the weakest link, or the bell and spigot Jr. So we may need a thrust block, or we may need to restrain two or three joints down on the non restrain pipe to prevent any type of pull out. Absolutely.

Will Vodak 

We could spend some time talking about the whole hour session on it’s got a great question here. And I think this is going to transition us into the next topic, which is can pe 4710 resins handle higher temperatures, what’s the difference in the 4710 resin versus the 3608 as you get up into that 121 3140 range?

Garry 

So temperature a question mark temperature range didn’t change from 3608 3406 to 4710. So they still that 140 is the magic number for pressure applications right now those those standard HDPE pipes will work up to 180 degrees for gravity applications. But anything pressure stops at 140. That’s where the PERT comes in. And that’s the sweet spot 140 and above. That’s where the polyethylene race temperature Sharada comes into play. 4710

Will Vodak 

is just going to have a higher hydrostatic burst strength it’s going to have a better pen pen test it’s going to have all the high pressure capacities for the same Dr even at that you know 110 120 range but the temperatures that didn’t change. So let’s talk about guys great questions. Please keep them coming. This is this is great when we can have interaction like this. And Timmy is also I love whoever can stump a Timmy gets a prize for this. So So Garry, let’s talk about what is PERT. So we’ve identified the challenge challenges we’ve got a lot of metal pipe that is not behaving very well. Right. Then we try to get some polyethylene here in works for a lot a lot of applications except in heating hot water. You know anything above 140 degrees. That’s where power comes in. Let’s talk more about what pert is. Let’s start with maybe the let’s back up. What’s the difference between HDPE

and pir? Well, there’s a lot of stuff similarities, right? It’s the same, it’s still a 40. Edits base at its core per pipe is a 4710 resin pipe. What it does have is an additives that have been included into the resin. That gives it the ability to handle higher temperatures under pressurized applications. That is really the difference. When you look at the two products side by side, if you didn’t see that, that gray stripe, you wouldn’t be running down the side, you would know which one for every 710 right versus per. So it is HDPE it is not a separate it’s not a separate product line. No. It can be designed the same way. It can be fused, well designed in mostly the same way it can be fused in the

Will Vodak 

exact same fittings. It’s it’s HDPE. on steroids. That’s what it is

exactly right. Yeah. So now I’m surprised. You haven’t asked me well, what’s the secret sauce secret? i Oh, this one those things? I can’t tell you. I think it’s like, you know, the 11 herbs and spices, you know, the home of KFC is right. We don’t know what that is. But boy, is it good. Whatever it is, it’s good. So all these things are still applicable. This is a used monolithic system that is not going to leak when installed correctly. We’ve got a 50 year design life on the PERT I think that’s probably due to it being a little newer, maybe and yeah, some of the additional testing, if you will, you will remember is more your time, right, you know, standard HDPE back in those 3608 days 3604 3406. Those had a 50 year design life. Sure. When we moved to the 4710 additional testing was done and so forth. We were able to elevate that life cycle to 100 year design life. Sure. And I think perch probably in that same window in its infancy. Right. But

Will Vodak 

in terms of the features and benefits, you and I were kind of laughing putting this together, we could talk about the same thing as ACPE. But it’s it behaves almost identically the same. Exactly. So all the things that you know and love about HDPE, all those inherent benefits are getting switching over from metallics you’re going to get with this, but the increase in the rating up to 180 degrees. So let’s talk about this here. Yep. So now you can see, you know, we’ve got certain pressures with that look pretty similar up until a certain point. And then when you get 100, above 140 things are no longer can’t do but they’re they’re doable. They’re there. Right? Yeah. Tell us about these pressure ratings. Yeah,

Garry 

exactly. If you took the column on the far left 73 degrees Fahrenheit, that is the exact same pressure rating of standard 4710 HDPE pipe at 73 degrees. So it is the same pipe it is 4710 pipe. It’s just as you said, that 140 degree temperature threshold, once you hit that standard HDPE is a no for pressure. This part now has the ability to handle pressures. Now. They’re still reduced. They’re not at the same pressures, because as I said earlier, the same principle applies Sir, your thermal plastic right in increased temperature, you’re going to reduce your pressure, right acid,

Will Vodak 

but at least that we’re getting listed published, and from pressure rating Exactly. Up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. That puts us into a really good temperature range for heating hot water applications. Right here. What else? Do you see PERT? You know, fitting into nicely? We’re going to talk about that a little later on in terms of applications.

Garry 

I mean, we talked I think we’ve got a slide later on. Well, that shows some of the different markets that we’ve been in, and that continues to elevate it. And primarily we had been focused on district energy college campuses in the light. But we’re seeing order, you know, projects in oil and gas, we’re seeing projects in landfill, as they’re, you know, extracting methane out of the landfill and the heat inside and sewer project sewer project, right, we’ve got a project, there’s a pulp and paper mill project, there’s a refinery that sort of, you know, sewer waistline, high temperatures, renewable natural gas, and we’re collecting methane and a dairy farm and turning that into energy. So lots of different applications more and more, keep popping up every day. So

Will Vodak 

Garry, let’s talk a little bit about our friends over a performance by who are the ones that are manufacturing, you know, pert right now. You talked earlier about availability in terms of size range in terms of, you know, you know, national presence, performance has been great for us to be able to manufacture this. This is being exclusively offered through perform. Yes,

Garry 

right. It The resin the core makeup of the material is a Dow Chemical product the the resin that they use and performance is the authorized manufacturer of the pipe and molded fittings of in the out of the port resin. Sure, yeah.

Will Vodak 

Moving on, you just mentioned fittings. So what types of fittings are available with PERT? Is it is it largely the same amount of fittings is it and we’re going to touch on size range here in a little bit as well. You know, what can designers expect to be available in terms of support to not only the pipe, but fittings is right,

Garry 

so molded fittings up to eight inch, the minimum size is two inch that’s where part starts so that that window is two inch. The small sides are eight inch fittings are molded elbows, tees, etc, right? Then we get in above eight and then we get into fabricated fittings where your elbows are mitered your tees are on mitered sections fuse together, there’s transition fittings to steel, you know welded steel, threaded steel, we can transition we’ve got flange adapters, we’ve got electrofusion couplings. There’s a tees available there’s branch saddles. So a pretty wide range of fitting options available in the part. There are some some limitations that we have from the standard HDPE into the PERT, but pretty much whatever we need to get to for connection we can get we can get that right. And

Will Vodak 

fabricated fittings above a certain size range are also available

Garry 

or correct. Yes, like I said at that once we do that, then we get into, you know, reducing tees with branch saddles fused on and so forth. Gotcha. Yep.

Will Vodak 

So we’ve already had a question about installation. Can you Let’s go through some of these questions before moving on here. size range available from performance in PERT.

Garry 

So is the real limiting factor on we said the smallest size is two inch? Yep. Really, when it comes down to it’s really the thick wall thickness, the Dr. Pipe, right? There’s a limitation because of the resin the properties of it extrudes a little bit differently than traditional 4710 resin. So there’s a limit in the wall thickness that can be produced with this pipe with traditional pipe extrusion process. Sure. And that is about two to two and a quarter inches thick. Right is the limit. So we’ve done projects to date up to 42 inch Dr. 21. That’s two inches. Right. So that’s so the OD really isn’t the issue. It’s more than the thickness while he learns. Yeah.

Will Vodak 

But But up until you know the standard size ranges, right. 812 16. Dr. 11, that’s all very

Garry 

24 inch. DR. 11  is very doable. And we’ve done those. Yeah, very doable.

Will Vodak 

So let’s let’s talk about we have a question here about Ken Miles is asking, Can pert come pre insulated? A lot of times, Garry, we’re seeing pert in situations that requires installation. And we wanted to spend just a little bit of time going over some of those options for you. Right. So really, we’ve got two ways of doing it. And it might depend on we times, it might depend on a jobsite conditions, it might depend on the contract and how things are broken out. But oftentimes, we are selling a completely pre insulated system, so that the contractor simply needs to worry about making pipe to pipe joints, maybe a couple of fittings, putting joint kits and fitting kits, installation kits over those areas and moving on. But largely the installation is already complete. You want to talk about this.

Garry 

Yeah, so pre insulated, we do see that quite a bit, particularly in those district energy applications that we talked about earlier, where they want to maintain that temperature from point A to point B, you know, if you starting with hot water at 160 degrees, you don’t want it to be 140 You hate to lose all that energy. So, so preinstallation particular climates up in the northern area, really this is pretty standard in those applications. What they do is take the polyethylene pipe the PIR pipe and they put a jacket HDPE jacket and inject foam into that area, that area around the pipe to encompass that leaving amount of pipe outside of that insulated area. So you can do your standard fusion to be exposed, which we’ll show or later on. Right. And then that area, that fusion area, once it’s completed, gets filled in with the what they call the field joint kit, right?

Will Vodak 

Kind of like you with your you know, ice cold Bud Light on the golf course. You put a koozie around that it’s going to keep it cold older than I wouldn’t know.

Garry 

There’d be a better be a mountain dew or an

Will Vodak 

Arnold Palmer. That’s it. So we’ve got the pre insulated option. Now, this is an engineered system. It does take a little extra time to be done, but boy, it does save a lot of time in the field.

Garry 

Yeah, it does, you know, and there’s there’s challenges there’s, you know, things that they have to account for when putting these in, you know, some of your Fusion equipment, right, you’ve got a smaller the carrier pipe that’s got one size a job to do the fusion, then you’ve got to hold the pipe around the insulated jacket. So you have a bigger insert on the back end. Right. You know, so your machines have to be sized accordingly. Not just for the periodic. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

there’s some coordination. Exactly. You can’t just take if you do an eight inch you can’t just take your 28 and make welds all day. Exactly. A little underpowered. Yep. Additionally, we can also do this on 4710 So insulation on chilled water for instance. 4710 Do you see it in some of the Southern climates where that you know that? Yeah, that might be an issue. Yeah, very, very common process done here. Another thing that we see quite a bit is Gilsland This is has become common on a couple of different jobs I’m not as familiar about I’d love to learn more from you. I know that I see those bags on, on jobs everywhere and oftentimes that someone’s either way overestimated or way underestimated the amount of gasoline needed. Yeah. So this is this is a phone a powder that’s you know, poured in to the to the trench area. Once

Garry 

the pipes are all laid. It’s got to be compacted down and tamp down. works works very well. I haven’t had as much experience with this. There’s been a couple of projects that you know, I’ve been involved with, with the PERT or even with standard HDPE pipe. But it works works very well. You don’t have the jacket you’re not worrying about that exercise. You know when you start talking about installation it’s your two inch stick around a pipe writer now your trench just even got a little bigger doubles opera with your when you’re putting in a lot of multiple pipes in so every every plus pros and cons to each of these different applications. Going

Will Vodak 

back to a quick we had a question can the jacket on preinstallation be made with different piping material? I do believe they have a PVC jacket option as well, I

Garry 

think they do. But I this 990 9% of write that I’ve ever done I’ve been involved in has been HDP thanks. Sometimes

Will Vodak 

I’ve seen maybe PVC for more above ground uses stainless jackets above stainless. Yeah, I have seen that. You know, obviously you can do a field installed installation. That’s not as robust as an insulation kit is this is but yes, you can have different materials in the insulation. So. So let’s talk real quickly about joining methods. For those of you who are not familiar with HDPE, or PERTS. Fusion is what we like to preach about here. This is our main way to join HDPE pipe or pert together. And there are several different types of fusion, blood fusion, sidewall fusion electrofusion are the three primary ones. You’ve also got socket fusion in there. We also offer mechanical couplings. But Garry, let’s talk on about but fusion just real quick. For those that aren’t familiar, you know, when when we’re sitting here preaching about, you know, no joints, help people understand why there’s no joints, so we’re taking two sticks of pipe. How do we get them together?

Garry 

Yep, exactly. It’s a tried and true process. That’s been proven. And we basically use heat. And we use pressure. Yep. Those generate and allow us to do what we call a fusion on the pipe. And that’s end to end of pipe for the bulk fusion. And if we’ve got a video that shows that we’ll walk through that process. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

Bradley Cooper decided to make a cameo here in our fusion yard. So there he is, ladies and gentlemen, and he’s put all away. I wasn’t gonna say it. So Garry, why don’t you walk us through this, this fusion here and I’ve never seen look at the speed, the dexterity and speed you have out there as is pretty impressive. Look at him go folks.

Garry 

So what we’re doing here is we’re simply clamping the pipe in the jaws. Your outer jaws are really holding and securing the pipe to allow us to do the other steps in the fusion process. Those inner two jobs that we tightened are just simply there to align the pipes and hold the pipe in place to allow us to do the work. So now we’ve dropped in a facer. That pacer has blades on both ends. And what it’s doing is it’s trimming the ends of those pipes, squaring them up, making a mirror images of each other, as well as removing any oxidation layer dirt layer on the outside of the pipe getting down to that virgin polyethylene in the fusion area. Now watch backing, checking our high low our alignment of the two pipe in making sure there’s no gaps, there’s no daylight. And since the dirty gloves of Bradley, when you touch the pipe like he wasn’t supposed to, we’re taking a little bit isopropyl alcohol and we’re just wiping the ends of that pipe. Now we bring in a heater plate, that heaters about 425 degrees Fahrenheit. And we’re going to bring the pipe ends together, notice one jaw side moves to the other, we make contact with the heater plate, we reduce our pressure. And we’re literally just soaking those two pipe ends against that hot heater plate.

Will Vodak 

It was a great shift. So you can sequence by the way really, really smooth there. Everybody watch here, you’ll see these pipe ends come together and form that infamous bead is when we’re always talking about explain more gearing. Yeah,

Garry 

so that is the visual indication that a fusion has occurred. So while we had molten ends, we pushed him together under pressure determined by the size and thickness of the pipe. And we hold it there until it’s cool. Remove it, we now have we have now taken to pieces made it into one. So

Will Vodak 

if we do that times on some projects, you know why don’t have 10,000 More those, you’re getting a single long pipeline, one monolithic piece. So when people ask me, Garry, what the heck is monolithic mean, but we love that word around here, just basically means you’re getting one continuous piece of pipe, provided everything has been fused. So again, that’s how we can do fittings. It’s how we can do transition pieces. There are other ways to fuse and of course, that is our preferred method. highly reliable, hurt is no different, right? Usually

Garry 

process exactly the same that we do for traditional HDPE. Pipe your equipments the same, there is no difference. So if you’re doing it chilled water line and one aspect, the same equipment will do the hot water line the next. Fantastic.

Will Vodak 

So moving on here, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask our audience a second poll question now that you guys have learned a little bit more about pert, how likely are you to use it coming? Moving forward? Garry, we’re off to a hot start.

Garry 

Literally right with the eye. That’s

Will Vodak 

a really good job. 51% of audience members are responding that they’ll consider it. But also 25% very likely that they’re going to be using PERT. I think there’s going to be some pert SPECT into projects here. coming up very shortly, which is what we’d love to hear. So you are about to time traveling in the future your project is finished. And we’re going to doing a case study on it right now here live on ISCO insights. So let’s talk about some of the different markets that you know pert has been used in and we think are a good fit. Moving forward. Yeah,

Garry 

we met we talked touched on them earlier, we’ll but quickly people can see him here, you know, industrial energy applications that oil and gas market, right and they’re extracting hot fluids out of the ground. Right. And district energy has been a big use college campuses, corporate campuses around had been using using that pert the mining application. Pulp and Paper we talked about that. I think one of our case studies is a pulp and paper

Will Vodak 

chemical plants renewable natural gas that you know that dairy farmers telling you about collecting that. Yeah, that thing? Nothing. Right. manure, right. Landfill, again, in these continued to seem to pop up new new applications. News when somebody hears about it, right. I never thought of that. Right? Yeah, one of the early adopters in this instance was Texas a&m University. They had a big challenge going on in their hands. Our friend Ruben down there was was looking at a number of different solutions. Ultimately, Garry, they were having a lot of problems losing a bunch of water. Yep. And it was really impacting, you know, their plant their budgets, lost their students. Tell us more. Yeah,

Garry 

I mean, you know, people know Texas a&m. I mean, this is a campus of over 60,000 students. I mean, that’s a it’s a pretty good sized city, right that they’re providing water to, and they are struggling, losing, you know, they were up to 50 gallons per minute, every day of water loss a lot a they’ve paid to treat and be you know, you’re not getting to us. So they needed to do something they you know, decaying of the existing pipelines, they were getting heat loss on our hot waters are shutting down dormitories because of the water, you know, lost water. So that has a big impact on the students that are obviously paying to be there. So that was they’re challenged and they were looking for options. They were familiar with HDPE pipe. They’ve been using other chilled water lines for Texans, and I’m already hearing HCP. Derek, come on, that’s what they do. And, you know, so

Will Vodak 

when this part product came about boy that really, you know, opened the door, gave them the opportunity to really convert their entire system. They’re not only they’re chilled water now, but they’re hot water as well. So they battle this all at once. You can see here a supply and return line for both chilled and heating water. And look at this this is now they haven’t been they haven’t switched their entire campus over to my understanding Oh, it’s still it’s still under 60,000. You can figure the side ramps, yes, that the amount of of switching from metallics to PERT and HDPE. They’ve already reduced that to only three to seven gallons per minute. Yeah, I would just probably you know, impacting this

Garry 

probably gotten a little better than a couple of years older in terms of that timeline. So it’s probably even better now. But the larger pipes that you see on the left, those are your chilled water lines. Yeah. Obviously in South Texas, a lot more chilled water. And then the two smaller lines on the right. Those are the hot water lines. Now, you don’t see the the gray stripe that we referenced on the platinum stripe per pipe because that pipe is pre insulated there.

Will Vodak 

Rubin has been incredibly pleased, let’s share the video.

with mechanical joints, steel, direct Vario carbon steel pipe, and just like anything else, it all decays in the water underground. And we’ve been having we had multiple leaks and and we look for an alternative way not using metallic pipe. And something that would last longer. And that you know wouldn’t have interrupt the students on campus, especially during the winter months. We were the first. We are the first summer months universities are asking questions to us too. We’ve been having good luck with this fight. We hadn’t had any issues. And it’s it’s it’s different. And but it’s in the long run. The benefits are great. A normal day, we could see 5040 gallons a day. I mean a minute, you know, because we had leaks here leaks there. And we repaired all the bad spots. And now we’re down. I mean, we’re down to single digit numbers. And you don’t see that at all. So wherever between three to eight gallons a minute, a day on main campus, that’s a drastic drop Sunshower on heating water, I think we’re down to three to six gallons a minute. And that’s through the whole campus. That’s sicko about 60,000 students, strong campus. That’s, that’s pretty significant. It used to be

Will Vodak 

so you heard it from Ruben, they’re essentially they’re very pleased with HDPE they’re glad they went to PERT. And that’s been the new standard for the university and my understanding is moving forward. And there have been a lot of different that’s, that’s one example of you know, colleges have been very early adopters in this especially those that are moving away from their traditional steam systems. Yep, there’s not you know, condensate lines running everywhere you know, 205 to 10 was hot water coming from different plants,

Garry 

right and steam is very expensive steam system is very expensive to maintain. Exactly right. And you’ve got you know, dangers and issues, safety issues that have you know, have to be in place as well. So, meiosis

Will Vodak 

said this is his homeland. I’m not sure if it’s Texas, which are Dr. Kent for two opposite ends of the spectrum mild but we’re glad you’re here anyways, there’s another pulp and paper mill that we have Garry, that was an early adopter of using pert they frankly were pretty sick of some very corrosive bleach systems for their paper plant want to tell us more? Yeah,

Garry 

I mean, they had been using fiberglass for and having struggles that you see here where you know the spider cracking total delamination And if anybody’s worked with fiberglass are very time consuming to do any type of repair you know, you’ve got to let things cure set you know you’ve got all of this whole elongated process to try to push the wind to fiberglass together it takes a while. So they were looking for an alternative is steel really wasn’t because of you know, bleach in the corrosion with the steel. Polyethylene works great you know from just from the chemical Resistance standpoint. They hadn’t you know, pert was new. They went ahead and, you know, looked at it, and tried it out and trying to come up with a better solution. And so they were presented with HDPE pipe.

Will Vodak 

Really this was for them, like many, it comes down to dollars and cents, right? Yep. And you know, at the end of the day, these are all great. At the end of the day, I also want a Ferrari. I’m not going to buy a Ferrari not like you, Garry, I haven’t figured out a way to get that into my contract. But you know, at the end of the day, they needed to look at this from a budgetary analysis. And it wasn’t just the materials here, it was total installed cost. Tell us more. Yeah,

Garry 

I mean, it really was, I mean, this was a, obviously an added benefit, they needed something that was going to last longer than the four or five year lifecycle that they were getting out of their current system. So they were really looking at the polyethylene and the part, it ended up being that the material costs for Bert was less than, you know, the, the fiberglass pipe. So but another benefit, right? The installation was over 11 times faster. Again, you’re talking about doing a fusion weld on a pipe for an hour and a half to two hours, versus doing one or two completions on fiberglass in an entire day. Right. So, you know, big, big advantage there, your pipe lengths, 50 foot lengths. So all of those came into play. And I think there’s a summary on the next page. This is what they did, they replaced the fiberglass with 30 inch HDPE pipe to different Drs. As the as the IV fluid moved down the line, the pressures reduced. So they were able to go with a thinner five Drs. Right. You know, they were able to, to install the polyethylene pipe the part right next to the existing line, so they could keep it in service don’t have to shut the the middle down. While they’re putting in the new right. The new line ended up being about total about $2 million in savings when you factored in all the labor. I

Will Vodak 

mean, look at the material. You’re looking at here. Yeah. 3200 feet. Yeah, at 30 inch. So you’re looking at a minimum 320 hours basically, to fuse that, but then look at that from from compared to the fiberglass stamp. It’s yeah, seven times that, yes, we’re talking substantial weeks, weeks, weeks, you know, installing this Yep.

Garry 

And, you know, the able to reduce because of the flexibility that we talked about with polyethylene pipe, and then being able to sweep that pipe around with, they’re able to eliminate some large diameter fittings, which adds additional increase and helps improve the flow as well. And then the last thing was, this one was kind of unique, was using a data logger on the fusion which we really didn’t talk to that’s in one of our fusion segments, a whole section on data logger. A data logger is a way to monitor the fusion process that the operators using the right temperature and pressure on the machine doing it right. Using that data logger. They’re like, we don’t need to do a hydrostatic test. Right? We we already know that they are done right here. Right in the fusion. Right. Why do you do enough water to fill a 30 inch diameter pipe?

Will Vodak 

I think that’s great. And you know what’s funny, Garry, when you reached out to them, get a comment. And basically like, yeah,

Garry 

everything’s great. Yeah. Then they hadn’t looked at the certain installed for, I think, close to eight years. Yeah. In a year. They haven’t even looked at it. Yeah. Which means they have not had any issues. They haven’t had to touch it. Right. Yeah,

Will Vodak 

it goes to show you I mean, this is a great option. Everyone, if you’re having issues with metallic piping systems, or if you’re having issues with, we see wood piping systems, you know, from the 1900s that need to be replaced with slip line, we see that on a week, no show no jokes at all. I told you, producers have told me I should stop making fun of your ancient age. But regardless, we’ve got basically, you know, a great option for you. We’d love to continue this conversation. So we hope that you’ll keep reaching out in the future. We’ve got a couple of questions, Garry, but first, I’m gonna tell people who ISCO is ISCO is a national solutions provider for all items related to HDPE started in the late 50s. ISCO specialized in irrigation before transitioning into more industrial municipal applications and end uses ultimately ending up in a diverse product range of nuclear systems through landfills aggregates, geo thermals, we are constantly finding new ways and avenues to use HDPE. To help customers with this product line. We also have rental equipment to help us up technical assistance from guys like Timmy and Garry. When you have some questions about design, we’ve got to An engineering department though, can kick out some, some, you know, CAD drawings and some technical design resources, as well as custom fabrication. So we’ve got a pretty large footprint. And we hope you’ll give us a call for your next HDPE or piping challenge. Even if you just have an idea and want to talk about HDPE, please reach out to your local resource and ISCO we’ve got people everywhere where you are, including in miles location up in somewhere in Canada. And we’d be glad to help. So we appreciate you letting me share that. And also, please connect with us on social media. I’m trying to become an influencer here, Garry. And I know this guy is doing a great job with that. So in all seriousness, we’re kicking out some great content and some really good resources, some entertainment, some education. So please go ahead and follow us on these social media channels and platforms. If you need see us very, very important. We are offering CPUs for this course, that you’ve taken the time today, we have to generate these manually. So please go ahead and visit HTTP s dot. Basically, it’s Kotecha, pipe.com, backslash CEU. And that’ll get a CEU request form. Please fill that out, give us a week or two. And we’ll kick that out as soon as we can. We have a hundreds of people that attend these. And we promise to get you guys all of them as soon as we can. But it does take some time. And addition, we’ll be following up with you on some of the questions that you have. Here. Let’s go through some of the questions that we have today. I’ve been saving this one for a bit. This is a great situation. Greg uses a lot of black HDPE for construction water supply from city fire hydrants, the tanks to fill our water trucks. Water is running out at pressures of 75 to 125 psi. In the desert, the pipe itself will get to 140 degrees in the summer, but the water inside is not. We have been told the regular pipe is okay.

Garry 

Is it? Great is 100% Correct? Right? Greg’s right? The neat thing about polyethylene? Yes, that surface temperature gets really hot. But polyethylene itself is not a great conductor of thermal temperature. So he’s fine. Sure, is 100%. Fine. We’ve got 1000s of miles of pipe running above ground, all throughout the desert, in different areas. And that’s not a problem. Now, if you’re moving that pipe, Greg, you may want to make sure you have some gloves, that pipe surfaces pretty hot to hold on to it’s going to be hot.

Will Vodak 

Garry, a question that I’d like to ask you, we get asked a lot. Let’s say someone is running a gravity line or low pressure system that’s operating around 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe it might see occasional spikes to 140. Are you going to recommend they move up to PERT? Or is that still a 4710 traditional application?

Garry 

It would be in my mind, it would be a 4710 application. But I will tell you that I’ve had some engineers and I’ve had that very conversation, their potential, it may be a spike above the 140. They don’t know how long the duration would be necessarily. And from a safety standpoint, they went ahead and made the decision to to go with the PERT even though I you know, my recommendation was I think you’re going to be okay with the standard 4710. I mean, these are not finite, you know, you fall off a cliff type scenario if the temperature exceeds that. But, you know, again, I leave it to the ultimate decision of the end user, the engineer, yeah, for that project makes

Will Vodak 

all the sense in the world. And we’ve also got some questions I saw throughout this process about pricing, about market pricing per pound, my answer there is please reach out to us, we’d be happy to work on some budgetary analysis for you all, market prices change on a, you know, sometimes weekly, or monthly basis, depending on a lot of different factors. And being the largest buyer and seller of both HDPE and pert in the country, we’re more than happy to take a look at your individual application and come up with a you know, a good cost estimate for where things are going to be. And it’s hard to pinpoint. It’s always moving around. We’ve had some great questions, Garry, but I think that about does it anything you’d like to add? No, I

Garry 

really thank everybody for joining us today. And we’ll set it earlier. If you’re you’ve got an application and you’re not sure does it? Does it meet that threshold? Where might be on the fence, give us a call. We’d be glad to talk to you about it, walk you through the scenarios, give you a recommendation and help you make the best decision for this system and application that

Will Vodak 

you need. Yeah, Garry, thanks so much for being here. As always, always a pleasure was me. Garry, you guys are the best to our audience. We’re gonna finish with the CEU screen because I keep fumbling the delivery of that line. But I would like to, on behalf of all my colleagues here Just go industries. Thank you for attending today. We really appreciate your time and your passion to learn more about HDPE please reach out to us in the future. So we hope everyone has a great safe Fourth of July weekend. And we will see you next month for a brand new episode. Very excited about this one all about a fusion joint from start to finish. Back to Basics. Tell your kids tell your wife come on in. We’re learning about fusion. So in the meantime, Everyone, stay safe out there and as always happy fusing.