Industrial pipe rehabilitation in Denver

The pipe under the plant floor

Industrial drainage around Denver is older than most of the equipment above it. Rendering and meatpacking works, grain and food plants, metal shops, rail yards and fuel terminals along the South Platte and the rail corridor through Globeville, Elyria-Swansea and Commerce City were laid out with cast iron, clay, concrete and steel drain lines that have been carrying heat, fat, acids, solids and grit for fifty to a hundred years. Concrete sewers in these plants lose their crown to hydrogen sulfide attack, cast iron rusts through on the invert, and clay joints open under heavy vehicle loading in the yard. The floor above is usually a production line, a loading dock or a rail spur, and the ground beside it is paved, piped and wired, which makes open-cut replacement a project measured in months and in lost production.

Rebuilding a line while the plant runs

Cured-in-place lining was developed for exactly this situation. A resin-impregnated tube is introduced through an existing manhole, cleanout or a single small access pit, inverted or pulled through the host pipe, inflated against the wall and cured with hot water, steam or ultraviolet light. The finished liner is a continuous structural pipe that takes the load and the flow, with the old pipe left in place as a form. Nothing above the line is disturbed. Bypass pumping carries flow around the segment during the cure, and the outage is measured in hours. The independent technical background on the method, including resin types and testing, is laid out at the CIPP reference.

Matching the resin to the flow

• Polyester resin covers conventional sanitary and storm service and most plant yard drainage.
• Vinyl ester resin is specified where the flow is hot, acidic or carries solvents, which describes much of what leaves a food plant or a finishing line.
• Epoxy systems are used for smaller-diameter process piping, pressure lines and locations where shrinkage and bond matter more than cost.

The plant supplies a temperature and chemistry profile, and the specification goes into the proposal so that the liner is matched to the service rather than to a generic sewer. Thickness is designed from pipe size, depth, groundwater and the live loads crossing the line, which in a rail yard or a truck court are considerable.

Storm culverts, yard drains and outfalls

Industrial sites in the corridor drain large paved areas to corrugated metal and concrete culverts that discharge toward the Platte or the storm system, and those culverts take the full force of Denver's summer cloudbursts and hail-laden runoff. Corrugated metal rusts through at the invert; concrete joints separate as the bentonite clay beneath them swells and shrinks. Both are lined in place, in round and arch sections, often with a liner thick enough to be structural on its own so that the culvert's remaining strength no longer matters. Flow is diverted or scheduled around dry weather, and the site is never trenched. Where a storm line has collapsed outright, pipe bursting or pipe reaming replaces it from pits at each end, which still avoids cutting through the yard.

Large diameter, odd shapes and long runs

Plant sewers and trunk lines in these districts run from eight inches up to several feet, and cured-in-place installation scales with them. Larger diameters are cured with hot water circulated from a boiler truck; long runs are staged from intermediate manholes; egg-shaped and box sections are lined with custom-formed tubes. Laterals and branch drains entering the main are reopened afterward with a remote cutter, and a post-cure camera survey documents every foot. the verified installer covering Denver handles work at that scale in the Denver area, and the standard it is verified against is published at the verified installer directory.

Permits, pretreatment and documentation

Inside the city, the service connection is permitted by the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure through a Sewer Use and Drainage Permit, with a right-of-way permit for any street work. Industrial dischargers also operate under pretreatment permits with the regional wastewater authority, and the installer flags any routing change that might need reporting. Sites in Commerce City and unincorporated Denver County follow their own permitting. Every job closes with the pre- and post-lining video, a line plan, resin and thickness documentation and the warranty, which is the record an environmental manager, an insurer or a buyer of the facility will ask to see.

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Industrial services in Denver

Questions about industrial work in Denver