Municipal Project- Town of Luray Main Street Sewer Rehab

Luray's sewer crisis.

Our client the Town of Luray approached us with the following sewer issue. They had a long 6" lateral pipe made of VCP(Terra-Cotta) that stretched over 150 LF through the intersection of main street and 211 business. This area has main power, gas and fiber optic over top of the sewer. It also is a major pedestrian and automobile transit point. The affected sewer lateral ties into a local well known restaurant as well and had special provisions needed to not affect the day-to-day service of the restaurant.

The town of Luray determined that traditional excavation was not an option in this situation. It would have taken at least 5 days of excavation that would have created an awful traffic nightmare for not only the local residents but for people visiting and passing through busy route 211. This would have posed a major risk to the underground utilities that served all of the main street corridor and would have equated to tens of thousands s of dollars to the local businesses that call main street home.

The Trenchless Solution

The Town reached out to the team at NoVa Lining and asked if they could help them with their problem. The team at NoVa came out and proposed a turnkey solution that would have the smallest footprint and not affect the local businesses on main street.

First and foremost was the issue of traffic control. NoVa proposed that the city handle this internally as it would keep the cost down to the city. They launched a plan to keep the intersection fully operable while the work took place, and it allowed the city to function as normal with no restrictive parking situations created for the patrons of local businesses.

NoVa's process was compressed into a 1 1/2-day schedule compared to the 5 days traditional excavation would have taken. This would limit lane restrictions and inconveniences along with creating the smallest footprint possible.

Day one found the NoVa air excavation and utility locating/designating team onsite bright and early to perform a precision designating of the affected sewer lateral. Once the exact position of the cleanout was determined they sprang into action and quickly began air excavating down to the pipe. The project had its challenges which includes multiple large stones directly over top of the sewer line. Most crews would have abandoned the air excavation and insisted on another location but not the NoVa Team. They showed the city some new tricks on how to remove large stones through extremely small precision holes that they thought wasn't possible.

Once the stone was removed and the affected sewer lateral cleaned off the crew set the appropriate VCP(Terra-Cotta) sized Vac A Tee saddle and quickly backfilled the hole. While the air excavation team was busy setting the cleanout the NoVa Lining cleaning crew was busy cleaning the affected sewer lateral so that the time on site could be optimized.

Day two was scheduled normally with the plan to keep the intersection open. The town made sure that the restaurant that was tied to the affected sewer lateral was closed. The lining team came in and quickly went to work. They installed two 75-80 foot line segments one right after the other and completed the rehab in one normal business day. There were no water restrictions needed as the business was closed and traffic operated normally.

The town was thrilled with not only the timeliness of the project but especially the overall cost and time savings compared to what traditional excavation would have cost them.

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