Pipe bursting

What is pipe bursting?

Pipe bursting in a relatively new technique involving the rehabilitaion and replacing of infrastructural pipes without the large scale use of trenches. Pipe Bursting involves forcing a conical 'helmet' through an existing pipe. This helmet is designed to fracture the existing pipe and widen the pipe cavity. Simultaneously, a new pipe is dragged through the pipe cavity.

The increased stress in the surrounding soil causes the soil to expand locking the new pipe in place with the same levels as the old pipe. The time and resources required for pipe bursting is a small fraction of that of tradition trenching techniques.

Range of works

Pipe bursting can be used for wide range of rehabilitation and upgrades. It can be used to replace a pipe that has suffered structural failure (Either within the lining or pipe walls) with a new pipe of equal dimension. It can also be used to upgrade pipes where the demand flow has begun to exceed that of the original design. It is common that an upgrade is done for both of these reasons. Harris civil are leaders in pipe upsizing and have pioneered a number of firsts (examples). We are also the first contracor in the Southern Hemisphere to succesfully upgrade to a 900mm diameter pipe using the pipe bursting technique.

Replacement lengths of up to 700m have been achieved with a single pipe burst. The following is a list of common sizes with the maximum size that that size can be upgraded to: