U.S. Rte. 30 through Mountville, Pa., is a four-lane, limited-access highway that serves as a major artery outside of Lancaster. It is a highly traveled road that is essential to area residents and commercial operations.
A small section of the highway was settling due to corrosion from roadway salt leaching. Prompt action was needed to save the quickly failing roadway from further stress damage, for fear that the entire section of roadway may be lost.
Extensive delays along that roadway needed to be avoided in order to limit impact on area travelers, and teamwork and orchestration were vital in developing a solution.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) issued an emergency bid on the project. A decision was made to make it a pipe reline project rather than an open cut excavation and replacement. This was done to save substantial costs and minimize the travel impact.
JD Eckman Contractors in Atglen, Pa., won the project bid. An accelerated schedule had already been put into place by PennDOT, which did preemptive work with CONTECH Construction Products Inc. to study relining options.
“Normally when you call a supplier, you have to slow down and review the plans with them to bring them up to speed with the project,” said Mike Perloski, who served as project manager for Eckman. “CONTECH already was aware of the situation, had reviewed several options and was ready to go with the solution.”
Eckman followed the PennDOT design and vendor recommendations for using ULTRA FLO pipe to reline the culvert. This pipe, with a 100-year service life, would be pulled through the existing pipe arch structure.
It would then have pressurized grout pumped in between the host structure and the new structure once it was blocked in, banded and set.
Temporary bypass pipe also was put into place through the work area.
“About 150 ft of 73-in. by 55-in., 10-gauge aluminum ULTRA FLO pipe was used,” said Perloski. “It only took a couple days to pull in the pipe and block it up. We used slings to pull the pipe in and flotation bracing to hold it in place prior to the grouting.”
Eckman completed the project within two months. “The turnaround time by everyone on the team was fantastic,” said Perloski. “We procured the material, got everything to the site and got the job done in record time.
“We then only had to limit traffic down to one lane each direction for just one day while we relined, milled and overlaid the roadway above the pipe. We saved a great deal of time and cost, as well as hassle for drivers. It is still in place and it still looks good.
“We at JD Eckman learned a couple of intricacies about pulling the pipe into place using jacks and slings.” said Perloski. “We developed more efficient practices from this project, and we now have some ideas on how to be even more efficient in the future.”
