How To Install a Pipeline Under a Railroad

I'm on location to document the installation of a water transmission line below two railroad tracks.
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Owner: Crystal Clear Special Utility District
General Contractor: ACP
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Practical Construction is a KZbin series dedicated to the built environment. The show builds on the success of Practical Engineering, one of the largest engineering channels on KZbin, with more than 3 million subscribers and monthly viewership in the millions. Hosted and produced by civil engineer Grady Hillhouse, Practical Construction videos provide thoughtful and engaging explanations of how the world is built (and maintained) around us.
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DISCLAIMER
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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.
SPECIAL THANKS
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This video is sponsored by Brilliant.
Created by Grady Hillhouse
Edited by Wesley Crump
Script Editing by Ralph Crewe
Graphics by Max Moser
Music by Donovan Bullen
Some music from Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

Thanks again, Crystal Clear SUD and AGP for having me on site. How are you liking the construction videos? 💡 Don't forget to give Brilliant a shot at brilliant.org/PracticalEngineering

[@Adhrit_Gupta]

Ok

[@stevenrod100]

Love the videos. I work for a gas company in Florida and our contractors mainly use a Ditch Witch for our horizontal drilling. Will you ever cover the use of electronic and radar equipment to locate underground pipe? How about the use of cathodic protection and anodes to protect steel pipe from corrosion and rust?

[@20chocsaday]

It reminded me of my travel to work in 1970, but the pipe was huge. Car sized to take water to part of a city.

[@20chocsaday]

​@@stevenrod100I hope the electronic equipment has improved since I last saw it in use. The foreman was trying to find the correct iron pipe under a road and eventually told us to, Dig that bit first.

[@mfulan7548]

There is no sources for the video

[@Hybris51129]

I love the fact that you have achieved enough recognition that companies are coming to you for you to cover their project.

[@captnduck]

And i hope that they keep doing that, been loving these vids, gets you an idea what these workmen you see often enough are doing

[@TheRogueRockhound]

In all reality , thats prolly not the case

[@ardaghion]

It must feel good to be invited to cover projects like these.

[@MikeHarris1984]

Yeah, the cities and companies can use these videos as a propaganda item for citizan relationship building and keeping the community informed. And having archived footage and infromation of these items that can still be around and archived 100 years later when students study how "they did it in the OLD days", lol. Like we use the footage for documentaries from building of bridges and sky scrapers and other tunnel digging over 100 years ago from today.

[@apsims12]

A collab with a company & another channel like The B1M would be amazing!

[@marcberm]

5:26 "Horizontal Earth boring is relatively straight forward" 😂

[@Bradamsmx5]

And exciting.

[@kizmetmars]

@@Bradamsmx5 but, before the earth gets bored...

[@digi3218]

​@@Bradamsmx5no it's boring..

[@marcberm]

Also worth pointing out: vertical earth boring is relatively straight up. Lol

[@digi3218]

@@marcberm straight up to China

[@JoseLuisOchoaPadilla]

"Of course every contractor knows as soon as he starts making good progress it's gonna rain!" Truer words have never been spoken... 🤔

[@666Tomato666]

As they say, Murphy was an optimist.

[@pshuang415]

So, clearly contractors should rent themselves to farmers as rainmakers....

[@yolo_burrito]

Working for an underground contractor in South Florida you plan dewatering from the bid if you plan on benching below 5’.

[@rhouser1280]

Watching that drill come out exactly where it’s supposed to has to be an incredible feeling for everyone working there!

[@matmair1915]

You get used to it but the feeling if it is not showing up is very bad. A colleagues site blew up, shattering all windows in the village, a few years back. Still getting nervous if the drill takes a second longer than it should.

[@eliotmansfield]

i think the people who built the channel tunnel were more relieved 😅

[@fleaguss]

I bet it feels like that early moment in Jurassic Park where Hammond is watching the baby Velociraptor claw it’s way out of the egg in the hatchery and he is just cooing away at this newborn.

[@JJGeneral1]

I asked a gas line guy once “how did they do that major transmission line under this river from up that mountain on the other side and know it was coming out right here?” He told me “they were within 1/10 of an inch of where they said it would come out. They’re good at what they do.”

[@RFC3514]

"It was supposed to come out in Texas."

[@jcpt928]

I hope more contractors reach out to you to have you do these types of videos. This is the type of stuff missing from our modern education system.

[@ahoksbergen]

There is a lot of footage out there. It has to be documented. Grady does a great job with footage. You can also ask your contruction and inspector friends. This stuff happens often. Most people just see barriers and traffic cones.

[@KumquatChampion]

​@@ahoksbergen taking footage is easy. Organizing and condensing it in to a coherent video is a skill

[@henryt9281]

People in charge of the education system are too concerned about convincing kids to change jenders and pretending everyone is a viktim of wite supermacy.

[@henryt9281]

People in charge of that care more about indoctinating jendre changes and wite supermacy.

[@caiusofglantri5513]

As an English teacher with a class of non-English-speaking Civil Engineers, these videos are a godsend. Grady speaks clearly and grammatically about a variety of subjects, and with some preparation, my students are able to watch and understand.

[@jcprov9481]

I’m a Hydrovac operator, I’m glad people get to see what we do in this video. I always have to explain to people not in the industry what I do and they always seem shocked that such a thing exists.

[@Curt_Sampson]

I had no idea that such things existed; what a brilliant idea. And, as a network engineer, I'm grateful for what you do. (One of my greatest enemies is the backhoe.)

[@toi_techno]

It was news to me watching this 🙂 Cool machine

[@MarkusLodenstrater]

So tell me - why not using a horizontal hydrovac to bore the entire track? A slightly modified one of course. Sounds less risky if it wouldn’t hurt any supply lines.

[@ClassicAirsoft]

Hey Mate, great Job ! Best regardes from a HDD Rig operator =)

[@ericlotze7724]

I've seen the pnuematic ones, but this was even cooler!

[@paulkinzer7661]

OOH! Practical Construction AND Railroads?! Sweet. As always with your videos, I learned answers to questions I would never even have imagined. Also, even though I'm 63, big machines are always a pleasure to watch. It brings me back to when I was a small kid in the 1960s and Interstate 94 was slammed through the part of St. Paul where I lived. The corridor for the freeway ran parallel to the street I lived on and was only 4 blocks from my house. My many brothers and I spent loads of time watching the coordinated process over two years. (We were excited and fascinated, and of course were unaware of the controversy about building these blocks-wide barriers right through the poorest neighborhoods of cities across the whole country.) A few years later, Richard Scarry's 'Cars and Trucks and Things That Go' came out, and even though I was a bit old for it (I was nine at the time), I loved reading it to the boys I babysat on the other side of my block, and still loved it decades later when I'd read it with my own boy. Your videos give me the same sense of wonder -- and fun! -- at the design, engineering, and building of large things. And your camera work on these construction projects, from wide shots with a drone to cameras dropping into water-dug pits, is fantastic!

[@lilydiring4295]

Freeway construction really is so impressive. Especially when you are a child and don't have to think of the consequences lol

[@woutervanr]

It is a great video indeed. There is a lot of high quality educational content on KZbin these days! You can't know and learn everything, but whatever you're wondering about, there is a good video about it on here more often than not these days. I have a hard time stopping myself from watching more and more to find out how everything works, haha But it still needs to be fun, and I need my sleep.

[@paulkinzer7661]

@@woutervanr Those could be exact words said by me!

[@tylerjae0622]

This is beautiful. Thank you.

[@paulkinzer7661]

@@tylerjae0622Well, thanks. ☺It was getting a bit long, so I left out that my son was the perfect age to watch 'Bob, the Builder' when it first came on, and that he's now a year away from completing his electrical engineering degree.

[@LukasKalbertodt]

12:15 looks like some workers signed the water pipe before inserting. That's cute :) It's a fun thought, thinking that below earth, there are tons of signatures from workers installing critical infrastructure ^_^

[@sharp14x]

It's great that they feel both confident and have enough pride in their work to do that!

[@circularrobert]

@@sharp14x it's like the signatures of carpenters hidden in the rafters of cathedrals. Their quiet shout into the world that "I exist!". And you can know that it's a tradition in the crew. Make sure to get everyone to sign, new guy gets a cheer and a clap on the back for his first signature.

[@johnnyh3653]

I once saw "Dave and Lisa did it in this pipe" painted on the inside of a 48" storm sewer during an inspection. That's what I call a cheap date night.😂

[@filipkohout4704]

​@@circularrobert That's what makes us human, we all want to shout "I exist! I did something" and that's my favourite thing about humanity.

[@spicybaguette7706]

The importance of coordination between construction workers and railroad operators can not be overstated. Last April in the Netherlands, a freight train and intercity crashed into a crane that was inexplicably crossing the tracks, killing the crane operator and injuring thirty people

[@bmolley]

As someone who manages the design of projects exactly like this for railroads across the country, I can say that this video is packed with a ton of information. This was such a good example to use to highlight all the considerations, systems, and techniques that make up a construction project like this.

[@synicyst9925]

I never had a clue how any of this was done before seeing this video. It made me aware of the tons of pipes and other infrastructure beneath my feet.

[@joshuasturre1454]

It's a good day when you get a new Practical Engineering video

[@massminer2343]

I stopped my job being an engineer to watch this video

[@NandanYT]

Nah, it's Practical Construction (1:27)

[@evilgibson]

Another Comment Anthony

[@robertregister2172]

I used to do this for a living and you did a good job of covering all of the tasks involved without over or under explaining it. Keep up the high quality videos.

[@rhouser1280]

I work at a power plant that used to be coal fired but switched to natural gas. Getting the pipe line there was amazing. It had to go under a subyard, under a river, up through a side of a mountain & pop up in a field a long way off. The drill bit came out within 1 ft of where they planned. I was amazed how they were able to do that! I get worried when I have to drill through a wall hoping I come out on the other side in the right spot.

[@mitchmackenzie3293]

As a surveyor, I’d love to see more videos promoting such a technological profession

[@stefanramdeen1828]

I second that

[@rudestlink]

7:58 Particularly, I'd like some details about using a GNSS base station to process total station data... In all seriousness, these videos are great to see the big picture of those projects we show up to and either stake a few points or take a few shots, then leave to the next job. I definitely look forward to future content both about surveying and just in general from Grady.

[@amicaaranearum]

As a dirt lawyer, I’d love to watch some videos about surveying.

[@joshwebber8556]

Also a surveyor, also think people need to know more about it!

[@PixelSchnitzel]

As an abject non-surveyor, I would ***LOVE*** to see videos that explain surveying!!! Please, oh please, oh please! 🙂

[@RyckmanApps]

After getting my “Practical” fix, I have to admit I used to ask why there are so many people on sites like this. Not after Grady’s last bunch of videos. Thanks to you Grady and Crystal Clear for making this happen

[@cavemaneca]

I'm always excited to watch a boring video from Practical Engineering!

[@lyledal]

Those vacuum excavators are very cool. Last year we had a utility pole come down and need to be replaced. The ellectric company used a vacuum excavator to dig the hole for the new pole. Super fast and extremely tidy!

[@pizzaivlife]

they are wonderful but oh boy is that sound annoying. I imagine their crews must get used to it though

[@asdfssdfghgdfy5940]

@@pizzaivlifei never operated it full time but I've done a lot of hours on a trailer vac. I never got used to the noise lol. We had to do some painfully large jobs with it as well excavating 5m each side of an essential fibre cable in the middle of the desert in Australia. It was so essential to running a gas plant and would have been a nightmare to replace so they were happier to pay for us to do that for two weeks rather than for a one hour excavator job. Oh and it was also 50C (122F) and we had to wear sperm suits for, you know, safety.

[@jcprov9481]

@@pizzaivlife ours are pretty quiet compared to the old ones. They are making strides in getting them quieter. Man some of them not tolerable tho. Even with ear pro.

[@johnnyh3653]

The real noise is generated when vactoring in gravelly soils. I been on gun ranges that were quieter.😅​@@jcprov9481

[@snoopdogie187]

I used to work outside at a gas station, and I think monthly a vac truck would come do some type of maintenance on the property. That was one of the most hated parts of being there ever. Those vac trucks are crazy loud, but I think it has to do with whatever sound they are making, not so much the sound level.

[@karryhardman8735]

In my youth I did a lot of this for AT&T pushing pipe with a pneumatic driver. Rail roads were very controlled jobs. Thanks for bringing back the memories.

[@jaxturner7288]

lol that’s funny seeing as you push the drill and then pull the pipe through. And a horizontal boring machine is not pneumatic, it’s hydraulic. Not sure what you were doing. 👌

[@karryhardman8735]

"pushing pipe with a pneumatic driver" You may know it as an air hammer, but the one we used was a 200 lb air hammer made for pushing pipe. It could be used as a underground torpedo on short runs with the cable tied to the braided steel air line. Think oversized jackhammer, vid of a small one kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYGqoWZqmtqYjrM

[@jaxturner7288]

@@karryhardman8735 uh dude that sucks bad…. May as well be a coal miner. Got any hearing left? Back issues?

[@user-vv8hg5fx1h]

I am a surveyor from Ukraine, currently working for a company from San Francisco. Very interesting video!

[@ricoreyes6044]

On the surface it looks like something I would have driven by and not thought twice about. It's amazing how many moving parts and details there are on a seemingly "simple" project. Thanks for taking time to document and make this video. I bet it wasn't easy to get all those shots *and* stay out of the way.

[@JoshuaC923]

I know right! Things we take for granted daily, until it stops working

[@keab42]

I'm so happy that this series is continuing. It's absolutely fascinating.

[@f.k.b.16]

Every time I pass a machine that runs the pipeline underground, I think to myself, "I wonder how those work? I should look that up!" ...And eventually forget lol! Thanks for the video!

[@dj_laundry_list]

I hope Grady does one video for each possible type of infrastructure intersection

[@bow-tiedengineer4453]

At first I wondered if it wouldn't be simpler, and thus cheaper, to just build the pipes up and over the tracks, but seeing the machine in action, I don't think you could get much simpler. It's an incredibly elegant way to run a pipe under something.

[@jasonirwin4631]

Something to consider about building over a railroad. Is what is the current max height of the line. If there are already tunnels or bridges on the line limiting train height then you just have to build something higher than those tunnels or bridges. But if there are no limits then you'll have to convince the railroad that you can build high enough to allow any legal height of train.

[@iamdarkyoshi]

Awesome of them to reach out to you for coverage! The fact they wanted their work to be documented by you shows not only that they trust you, but that they're proud of their crew as well. Great stuff.

[@Lavonne9870]

Plus it's free advertising

[@jamesa3818]

This was really cool to see. I had a crew install a new sewer pipe through the CBD, under busy intersections, and they were in front of my house for months (only 8 hours per day though). They also had to bore a bit further than this. Me, an engineer, thought they couldn't possibly take 7 weeks to install the pipe. But watching this I realise 7 weeks of 8 hours per day, 6 days per week to go 300m was probably really good timing. Also, yes, I snuck into the site each night to check it out and when it was finished I crawled through the entire length of pipe (before it was commissioned).

[@CeaselessGaming]

Being invited to these different sites is such a cool experience. Keep up the great work. As an aeronautical engineer, seeing civil engineering is certainly interesting!

[@tumekeehoa3121]

Perfect timing! I was leaning on my shovel wondering how to get water over to the other field. Thanks for the plan and a shopping list.

[@MC-sg5yr]

I work in drinking water in Austin so I love seeing you do a video on a topic I am familiar with. Thank you for all the great information you share!

[@basedad]

To Grady, From a Brady: This practical engineering series is BEYOND top notch... please continue with these kinds of series down the road. Love it!

[@iris4547]

one of if not the best channels on youtube. i like a few other channels for their mindless content, but this one makes you think, and is fun to watch.

[@PhotonBread]

Utility Locator here, HVAC can definitely damage underground utilities. I’ve run on multiple emergencies where HVAC cut gas services

[@LetsTalkAboutPrepping]

But how? From the boom operator wracking the line with the vacuum aperture, or some other mishandling of the process? Or are the pipes so close to failure that the pressure washer finishes them?

[@martylawson1638]

@@LetsTalkAboutPrepping When set to tight focus and at point blank range pressure washers cut through plastics pretty fast. So I'd guess operator error.

[@jcprov9481]

The damage I’ve seen is from operators smashing the boom down on plastic pipes, too high of pressure, and letting large chunks of dirt slam down onto fitting. I’ll admit, I hit a saddle on a 1 inch service with a chunk of falling dirt accidentally. Thankfully it had already failed and was being dug up for repair but I didn’t help it any 😬

[@southwestxnorthwest]

My pops started his own hydrovac business in Phoenix back in the early 1980s (Western Hydrovac) and I remember him telling me how much water pressure ran through the jet rodder; enough to sever a limb easily

[@PhotonBread]

@@LetsTalkAboutPrepping Mostly high pressure and just carelessness but I’ve heard of rocks gashing a hole into it as well

[@grimace5800]

One of my favorite things to watch last summer and the summer before during my internship. The crews were also great to talk to and learn from.

[@theronwolf3296]

I live a few hundred feet from a river. A few years ago the gas company needed to run a new pipe under the river. There was a boring rig on the other side in an industrial area and the terminal end was on my street. They fed the pipe from the other side of the river but also push/pulled through a hole in the street right by my house (made it hard to use my driveway at first but they worked around that issue). Fascinating to watch.

[@LovSven2011]

5:25 "In practice, horizontal earth boring is relatively straightforward." Brady, you crack me up! 😀 (Uups, correction: Grady)

[@icebird76]

In a similar topic of elevation, his name is Grady, not Brady.

[@LovSven2011]

@@icebird76 Thx, man. My mistake. Grady introduces himself simply by voice twice in every video. Not written clearly for longer time. Grady does lift up my day. 😃😎

[@JamieStuff]

Thanks, Grady, for doing these construction videos. As an old electrical engineer, I am fascinated by the practical application of civil engineering. And I'll agree with the contractor; sometimes the old school ways are the way to go.

[@AubriGryphon]

I once worked for a contractor that built railroad crossings, and I remember the complaints about a job along a very busy rail line where the contract didn't allow them to disrupt service in any way, so they had to stop work every 15 minutes or so to let a train go by.

[@jm5390]

I work with a civil engineering and GIS company and deal with railroads and permitting all the time. I love seeing how this works in the field! Thanks for the video!

[@floschy_1]

the puns hurt my soul. Please more

[@sergeib.v]

This machine is fascinating, not boring

[@davemo04]

😂

[@wfemp_4730]

It's both!

[@veeflames187]

As a Nassco operator, and vactor operator, its amazing to see you coving this stuff

[@HeadlineNews]

I work civil every day, but still love to come home and watch one of your videos. On site Surveyour. Learned on the job. 13 years of Carpentry experience prior, I became our companies lead surveyour after less than 3 years.

[@sorek__]

Thank you for all you doing. Encouraging people to become engineers/technicians is very important, and showing this stuff is super interesting for everyone.

[@dodrian]

We really enjoyed watching this one on Nebula a few weeks ago!

[@angielott83]

I always have a bone to pick when I feel like we are “just getting a new water line!” After having to deal with construction. But water is important I get it…. 😉 This process really is fascinating!

[@skarloeyable]

Finally! I've been looking for a getting a pipeline under a railroad tutorial for AGES.

[@kurtspann442]

They did this next to my house to install sewer line under tracks. I looked down the hole one night but didn't get to watch it work. Only saw the tracks laying in the hole. Thanks for showing this. I was very curious about how it worked.

[@remuladgryta]

"horizontal earth boring is relatively straight-forward" Grooooan lol

[@user-cf3so7mi2o]

Debate about it and evaluate the project 11 times until abandoning it 15 yrs after

[@FuncleChuck]

You have a bright long career ahead of you in public works

[@raymondlyons361]

I've dealt with this as well, as a pipeline engineer in California. Thanks for explaining this to everyone!

[@Flaakk]

This was one of your coolest recent videos. Please more of this real life practical engineering projects. Very fascinating!

[@ben_hell4437]

First of all, I love these Practical Construction videos. Second of all, my brother is a surveyor. This makes total sense considering that he is a whiz at math.

[@bmeir1]

NEED WAAAAY MORE OF THIS! Thank you Grady!!!

[@RoseIllo]

As soon as I saw the title I absolutely had to watch it, because I have crews in front of my house doing this exact task, with railway lines replaced with suburban roads. Although they first have to remove existing pipelines encased in concrete before they can put in the new ones.

[@ScoopWellyWelly]

As a Surveyor I loved the shout out to our profession at the end. I really enjoy my work. It provides alot of the advantages of being a tradesman or engineer without the downsides of either of those professions.

[@omega999qxj]

👍

[@OceanBagel]

The topic of this video is... boring 😎

[@Krithik-kn5zz]

Poor joke

[@user-bx2xm5cg4x]

There were only 9 likes in a whole month. lol, this was a really bad joke

[@crquality2002]

Another great video with insight to railroad procedures and processes! I am lightly involved in these types of projects several times a year... gotta mark the signal cables, and have personnel there if "daylighting" is required before the jack and bore! Thanks for your efforts, another winner.

[@djking44151]

I'm absolutely LOVING this series. It's so cool to have you on site!

[@asdfssdfghgdfy5940]

This is a pretty...boring... Video

[@Golden_Pawz]

Because you is not old enough to understand

[@fjr3950]

Grady: love your work. My dad was a civil engineer for the state of New York. He got started as a battlefield engineer in WWII.

[@bradlevantis913]

Videos like this remind us how much more efficient construction projects are today than in the past. It’s easy to look at some road work and think ‘when will they finish?’ But it really doesn’t compare to projects in the past.

[@danielhale1]

One of the coolest things to me is that we can point at a mountain, say "I want the road to go through THAT", and we have a machine that not only drills the path but also installs the walls and sealant and ventilation etc slots as it goes. I play a lot of fantasy games, and I like to imagine blowing a dwarf's mind by showing them how we dig. :D The things we can do with our technology are absolutely fantastic, and they're mundane enough that we don't really know about a lot of them. Thank you for videos like this one that show the process!

[@dallasstroud8061]

Nice video! Fun fact, never assume that an old RxR ROW is abandoned by the RxR company! We cut a ditch through an old RxR ROW that had no rails on it anymore and had 8”+ trees growing through it. It was hardly even recognizable as an old rail road! A RxR inspector showed up and gave us an ear full saying they may come back to it someday. We had to go deeper and use heavier wall pipe. Lucky for us there were no fines involved! Landmen did their job correctly it just turns out the RxR was two months late responding to the notices and one calls! I really enjoy these videos!

[@russcalder]

Wow very cool, I used to live in that immediate area. I drove that road daily for many years and still have family that live there. In fact I can just make out their house in some of the clips; I’ll have to send this to them. There is a nearby quarry which is the reason for all of the gravel haulers. The percussive hits of their tires on the concrete railroad crossings cause the crossings to breakdown over time and they have to have to replace them at least once or twice a year. The trips across them become fairly jarring once they start breaking down, especially if you have a car. And since there are two crossings next to each other, you get twice the punishment. Interestingly enough, the damage is always on the side of the roadway that leads away from the quarry due to the weight of the trucks. Thanks for posting this!

[@michaeldufresne9428]

I was really surprised that it took a week to get the job done, especially considering that they were working 24 a day. Props to you for being invited to watch them and make this video

[@CptPatch]

This video was fantastic. I'm a network engineer and I've had a couple projects delayed while the contractor laying fiber had to negotiate a railroad crossing (and deal with a gas company that failed to locate their lines along the railroad after days of potholing in the Arizona summer...) and I've always been curious about what some of the extra steps look like.

[@liamthompson9342]

This is great. So often I watch projects like this trying to figure out exactly what they're up to. It was only relatively recently I discovered what those vacuum trucks are, after seeing them with increasing regularity on the roads for years. What a great invention.

[@josuelynch4586]

Watching how our world as we know it comes together is so intriguing to me and I am so thankful for people like you Grady, to allow me to watch this and become a part of it. Hope you have a great week!

[@Barbasnoo]

That transition to the sponsor was seamless and meaningful!! Awesome video!

[@20chocsaday]

In 1970 I used to travel to work alongside a major water pipe installation. The concrete pipes went alongside this stretch of road and were big enough to drive my friend's Mini through. All the power and phone wires had been raised extra high, marked and were used as gates, you couldn't get past on another track. After a while I remember the article about the tunnel bored through a hill to use this water source and I realised it must come out somewhere on the other side of the road I was on. But I had not seen tunneling work on the other side. It seemed as if they had come 1/4 of a mile underground from the edge of the hill until they had passed under the road. Aside from the tracked vehicles cutting up the field and compressing soil it was a very neat job.

[@Swearengen1980]

That sounds like it was a stormwater pipe, not a water main. WM's have always been relatively small and I don't think concrete has been used in centuries. That time period, it would have been cast iron (stopped due to lead poisoning) or clay, if they hadn't already changed to galvanized steel. Galvanized steel was also relatively short lived as it was replaced by ductile iron and now we use more HDPE or PVC. Stormwater pipes have been and still are reinforced concrete pipe. Well, RCP when it's load bearing anyway as now we use HDPE a lot.

[@20chocsaday]

@@Swearengen1980 We were told it was a new water supply from one of the largest natural water sources in the country. That source was already supplying a small dam. The supply main from it broke one day and some houses in an expensive area were suddenly flooded. However, I don't know what they lined or otherwise finished the concrete pipe with. I suppose there might be someone there who remembers and knows.

[@JohnChuprun]

Yeaaa, a video about horizontal boring - always fascinating and it's almost all that's used here in the Arizona valley now-a-days because of the density of the place here now!

[@cliff9745]

Grady- fascinating, as always. I live in the Tampa/St. Pete area and watched a crew push a new water line (with sections assembled) and pushed under the Intracoastal Waterway to the barrier island in Pinellas County. Your video helps me understand how this could possibly be accomplished. The engineering seems incredibly daunting. Big fan of your Practical Engineering and, now, Construction. Thanks Grady- you continue to make the complexities of our world understandable.

[@seanwiley558]

There are a lot of things I'm curious about when it come to "how it's done", and there is a lot of thing I don't even think about. This channel fills all those.

[@zyphryx9]

Vacuum excavation is one of the best ideas since sliced bread. Saves us thousands. Great video

[@biw3199]

Very cool to see this video, I recognized the location in the spoiler you placed in an earlier video. I'm a geologist that works at a nearby quarry; close enough to this project that the Crystal Clear SUD wells for this pipeline are on our property. I drove by this site many times during the process, and it's nice to see what was going on down in the excavations. Thanks for the great video!

[@rayopeongo]

I just learned about vacuum excavating recently. They are installing fiberoptic cables in my neighborhood, and there are vacuum excavators all over the place, digging holes for the new cables while trying to avoid all of the other existing stuff: phone cables; electrical cables; gas lines; water lines; TV cable lines; sewer lines; etc., etc., etc. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but I realized that it was a genius idea; quick, precise and clean excavation with very little risk of damaging anything. Once they are done, they come back with a slinger truck to fill the hole with soil. They use directional drilling to run the cable horizontally, then dig vertical holes to join them up. For weeks, the neighborhood has been full with marking crews, directional drilling machinery, and vacuum excavators. It's not too inconvenient, and it's nice that a construction geek like me can observe an infrastructure project that has literally come to my front door.

[@PeeHooo]

I wish surveying could be covered more thoroughly some day. It is interesting profession and it's mysterious to most of us.

[@LazrCat0]

Maybe one of the most interesting new series from established youtubers; I don't know of anyone that combines both in-depth technical knowledge with on-site filming in such a compelling way. Hope you get many more partnerships in the future!

[@Wampa842]

Not all construction operations are equally exciting. Drilling or enlarging a hole can be boring, but fixing two pieces of metal together is often riveting!

[@RickJohnson]

Learned the term potholing! Watched it done in my neighborhood a few weeks ago as a local fiber company is boring and installing fiber. They potholed around each water meter to avoid water lines since their proposed alignment came pretty close to existing lines. They did similar measurements around known gas/electric infrastructure, then painted their depths on the pavement nearby before starting the drilling operation. Very cool, and the backfill afterward made it look as if they were never there.

[@dan725]

YES YES YES another Practical Construction video!!!!!! Today is a good day!!

[@sujitnair4408]

I love this channel. My favourite channel on KZbin right now.

[@feldamar2]

Thank you Crystal Clear and others! That was a great idea inviting him. And of course thank you @practical Engineering This was a great video showing how things...just work. The best compliment a piece of infrastructure can get is...no one noticing it doing it's job for 20 years. So thanks for going out of the way to show things working anyway

[@jdgower1]

Extend and extra thanks to Clear Water, and you, from a viewer of yours that has always been curious about the details of how stuff like this is done. I've been a subscriber to your YT channel for quite a while and really enjoy how you explain "how the sausage is made" as it pertains to civil engineering stuff like this. I've worked on the industrial and institutional side of engineering for almost 40 years, but never having worked in the macro-infrastructure/utility side and being hella curious about that stuff, videos like this make me feel like a kid in a candy shop.

[@uncleduff7895]

As a civil engineer student these video are great for showing the whole process of practical engineering, out on site in the trenches. It’s a break from lectures and study to remind myself where I want to end up.

[@johnnyh3653]

Go watch construction whenever you get a chance. Talk to the crew if you can and ask questions. I worked on a survey crew during the summers when I was a student and that was a great experience. Good luck on your career!

[@MrGlenferd]

I worked on a crew running underground power in the 70s. Boring companies existed but we didnt use them unless needed. We had 5 foot sections of strong pipe that we screwed together as we pushed further in with a backhoe. I was the guy lining up the pipe and assembling it. Then we screwed a reamer on the far end and pulled it back through to expand the hole. Sometimes several times with progressively larger reamers. Had to run under the CN main line. We kept hitting timbers. Had to dig a hole for the tractor to sit low enough to go deep enough. Another spot on the same run was such a hard pull we had to chain the winch truck to the tractor and the trencher with blocks behind the wheels and used a 3 part line with half inch cable and anapped that. That job took a week. Ah the good old days.

[@jakekrueger104]

I'm a drafter for a civil engineering company and I have a project that has drilling for water main and sanitary sewer under a railroad line so it was cool to see this perspective because I'm usually always in the office and don't get too see it built

[@spartan1986og]

Gah, that central Texas clay! The color of that stuff (6:24) triggers many memories. While stationed at Fort Hood many decades ago, I lost more than one vehicle transmission trying to drive down rutted tank trails made of that stuff.

[@Ben942K]

Really happy to see this video. I poured concrete for a job going under the rails and the contractor mentioned a different company would finish that portion. The work was electrical, but imagine some same work methods are used.

[@psymar]

I appreciate that they're looking empirically to determine where the utility lines are. We had a project at our house where we called the gas company out to mark their lines, the digging started like 10 yards away... and they dug right into the line, which was apparently not where the gas company thought it was.

[@jerrycochrun4444]

Great video, as a Construction Senior Project Superintendent I managed a couple projects in the railroad right of way. The railroad has many rules for working in their R.O.W. And permitting can take time. On one project we had bore a new storm pipe under the rails, on another we had to set up a crane in the R.O.W. to service a building being renovated, whose edge of building was on the edge of the R.O.W. (Seattle north waterfront area). Again a great video.

[@georgegoodwin9722]

Great video Grady, thanks. This project reminds me of another intersection of rail lines and construction underground. During the Big Dig, I watched, fascinated when they froze the ground under the South Station railroad tracks and then proceeded to excavate and push a whole tunnel under the tracks! What a show, and a great demonstration of the power of hydraulic pressure.

[@DC-id2ih]

This was just great...a pleasure to watch! I've always been fascinated by civil engineering and the clear, concise, step-by-step approach you use in your videos to walk layman like me through these complex projects is fantastic (makes your channel one of my favorites on the platform....not to mention your book was great too!) ...cheers!

[@Soundhound101]

That AWWA C909 blue PVCO pipe is something else. Earthquake proof and practically crush proof.

[@Pitstoproadside]

Please keep practical construction going! There's no other Chanel like it!

[@AmatuerHourCoding]

LOVE these videos! Especially appreciate the more detailed series, like the sewage pump station. I hope more companies approach you when doing these projects!

[@JoshuaC923]

Fascinating! We take water supply for granted, modern civilisation built on the shoulders of those who have come before us. Thank you!

[@FFWrench]

Thanks Grady! Another fantastic video. You are one of the top content creators I’ve seen of all time. You take these projects that we see everyday and show us in detail what is going on and how it all works and affects us daily. Awesome!!