WALMART Retail Outlet

Date: 2003
Place: Lompoc, California

About this Project

The people at WAL•MART need the aisles open during business hours so this was a night job.

The main sewer line from the store was in serious need of replacement and ran the length of the store. As with many WAL•MART locations, the store features a McDonalds restaurant inside. The original pipe was made of cast iron which suffered severe corrosion from cola which was present inn the drainage from the restaurant over a period of years. Lompoc’s Plumbing Inspector would not allow PVC and insisted on ABS replacement. All the old cast iron pipe was replaced with ABS (which was fused ahead of time) to resist corrosion occurring again, and the entire job laid a total of 400′ of 4′ and 6′ pipe.

Work pits had to be dug requiring a concrete saw to extract sections of flooring which would be replaced as covers during operation hours of the store. The job took three days, disruption to staff and customers alike was minimal and even WAL•MART was relieved at the difference in cost by going trenchless!

Traditional methods of replacement would have caused serious interruption to business, would have taken at least a month to complete and restorations costs would have been very high.

Pipe pulling equipment was brought into the store by hand due to narrow access routes.

The location for the pit was in a high-traffic area requiring all work to be done after hours.

During the course of the job the pit had to be covered and secured during business hours.

The hand-dug pit (due to the interior location) was 7′ deep and the pulling equipment was assembled in the hole.

New pipe was fed into the pit by hand.

New pipe is finally in place and the job is complete.

The safety supervisor took his job quite seriously but we were sure he was smiling on the inside at how smoothly the project went!

WAL•MART once again had both happy shoppers AND a functional sewer!

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