There was a heat wave in St. Louis that summer, but that couldn't stop All-Bore, Inc. from completing its work on a Level 3 Communications project in the downtown area. The project coordinator was engineering firm NMC, and this project was on a fast track. All-Bore, an Indiana-based company, had been contacted by the general contractor, DevCom, Inc. out of St. Charles, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, to complete this challenging task.
The project involved pulling up to twenty-four 1 1/4-inch ducts a distance of as much as 850 feet- a difficult or impossible task for some machines. But All-Bore uses Vermeer D80 and D50 machines, which are more than up to the task. Some other contractors in the area were having difficulty with these multiple-duct pulls, but All-Bore and Vermeer were able to get the job done.
Because of the very congested downtown area the project was in, the work "day" was 6 PM to 6 AM. Of course, with the daytime temperatures in the upper 90's and heat indexes of up to 115, the All-Bore crew didn't mind the night shift at all. Ed Klein and John Lewellyn, co-owners of the company, along with John Klein and Dan Boomershine make up the very experienced crew. Each night they pulled in their equipment, set it up at the designated spot, and began their task, knowing they had to be out of the work zone by 6 AM or face stiff fines. There was certainly no time to fumble around and be unprepared, but the All-Bore crew always prefers to be well prepared and get the job done quickly and right the first time, so this project was right up their alley.
Due to the time constraints, the crew found the best strategy was to bore out one night, then pull back that bore the next night. They could then re-set at the next site and bore out another section to be ready to pull back the following night. With this plan, they knew that, if they should encounter a difficult pull-back, they would not be left with product to be pulled back still in the ground and the 6 AM time deadline facing them. Using this method, the crew was able to pullback 800-plus feet and then bore out another 800-plus feet in the same night, thus completing 2500-3000 feet in a single four-night week. Using Vermeer's new spline-lock system, for easier removal of the drill head and connection of the back-reamers, All-Bore selected the 18-inch super-helical reamer for the front, and followed it with an 18-inch sprial-fluted carbide-tipped reamer on the back. They then attached the twenty or twenty-four ducts to their multi-duct puller for the pullback to begin. A combination of Poly-Bore and Condent with water flow of about 100 gallons per minute through the back reamers was used to keep the pullback smooth.
Besides the heat, the time constraints, and the challenge of multi-duct pulling, the St. Louis downtown area is chock-full of underground obstacles that had to be navigated around. The streets of downtown St. Louis contain the usual assortment of water, sewer, gas, electric, telephone, and fiber-optic lines, crossing each other in a maze. But in addition to all that, The City of St. Louis has a high pressure steam system which runs throughout the downtown area, providing steam heat to local businesses and residents. Hitting one of these lines would cause a huge blowout in the street, and be a real mess to repair. Carefully locating all these utilities and navigating the bore with a Digitrac Mark 7, the team completed bore after bore successfully without encountering any conflicts with existing lines.
There was a heat wave in St. Louis that summer, but that couldn't stop All-Bore, Inc. from completing its work on a Level 3 Communications project in the downtown area. The project coordinator was engineering firm NMC, and this project was on a fast track. All-Bore, an Indiana-based company, had been contacted by the general contractor, DevCom, Inc. out of St. Charles, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, to complete this challenging task.
