another huge hole and road closure>>>

[puzzled]

does anyone know what is happening at the junction of friern rd and peckham rye. this place has been dug up so many time in the last few years and yet another huge hole has now been excavated

[DulwichFox]

Last time it was dug up one of the workmen lost his wedding ring..

So they are digging it up to try and find it...:))

[sophiesofa]

I'm quite gullible - is that true?

[puzzled]

hahaha

it is probably all down to cllr barber, who has a strange loathing of internal combustion and thinks everyone should be forced to ride bikes (with or without helmets) and seeks to adorn every junction with horrendous raised areas

[DulwichFox]

If we all travelled by bike.... What Boris wants...

http://www.extendance.com/blog/uploads/bikes-in-China.jpg

Would toke hours to cycle from ED to the City..

[Frankito]

I do it every day and it takes 25-30 mins (max). You should try it Foxy.

[DulwichFox]

Frankito Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I do it every day and it takes 25-30 mins (max).

> You should try it Foxy.

I traveled to the city every day for 40 years.. mostly by bus...

Never want to go there again...

[James Barber]

Southern Gas Networks - 10 months of work to replace all the gas pipes on Friern Road.

I challenged the need for 10 months with council officers on the one hand stating they would tell SGN they must be finished by Xmas and the other hand advertising 12 months of road closures.

In the states they put robots inserted at 150m intervals to re connect cast iron pipes - fraction of the cost.

In the Uk the Health and Safety Executive have insisted all cast iron pipes must be replaced at a national cost of tens of billions of pounds. In the states in earthquake regions they haven't been that draconian or wasteful of national resources.

[Huguenot]

I think that misrepresents the facts.

There are 78,000km of cast iron mains up to 100 years old that will reach the end of their mechanical life in the next 20 - 30 years. This means a substantial rise in pipe failure and the risk to life associated with that.

This is not because of earthquakes or geological problems, it's because cast iron pipes get old and fail. They rust and decay like everything else.

Pipe replacement exercises have over the last three decades reduced the major incident rate from 25 a year to 3.5 a year.

Where substantial failure occurs it will also result in cutting off supplies to residential and commercial customers, possibly in winter time with the associated fatalities of at risk customers.

Hence to head off this crisis, between 2,750 and 4,000 km of pipe need to be replaced EVERY year.

To put that in context, over the 5 years to 2000, only 1,840km of pipe on average was replaced each year. So in order to head off this problem we already need to do more work on pipes than historically we've ever done.

Politically it must be very attractive to 'put off' this work until somebody else can be blamed for the failures and deaths and spend the money on tax cuts.

It is a mark of the maturity of the last two governments that they have seen the scale of the problem and have committed to the necessary work.

Detail here.

It's bad luck for the guys on Friern, but it's just your turn, next time it'll be someone else's turn, and it MUST be done.

[James Barber]

Hi Huguenot,

I'd read that.

Cast iron pipes don't rust without oxygen. Originally they were deployed to carry town gas which had a high moisture content. the connections between each section of cast iron pipe layer involved jute which with the moisture in the town gas proved to be be an excellent yet flexible joint filler. Town gas was replace by natural gas which has a minimal moisture so the jute has dried out and the joints are more prone to leaking.

Rather than replace the cast iron pipes because the seals are failing in the US they replace the seal from the inside using. Robot. To prioritise which pipes to reseal they have recently developed a car based censor that produce gas leak profiles with the vehicle able to proceed at 60mph. So they can map out a whole city in a week or two.

The beauty of the CISBOT robot is you only a need a hole dug every 150m and the robot can reseal 150m of cast iron pipe joins in an 8 hour shift. So Frienr Road could be done in a week with this technology.

As for risks of gas explosions. Replacing all gas pipes means huge amount of road works and every road work carries risk. This non intelligent method will be causing more death and injuries from roadworks than the risk of explosion.

[Huguenot]

I'm not a metallurgist, but I can tell you that iron needs an oxidising agent, not oxygen to rust. Both carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide will cause cast iron to rust in the presence of ground water. Both are entering the ground water in increasing amounts because of industrial pollution.

Road salt also increases the salt in the ground water and the rate of rusting.

So what would you perceive as the motive for choosing to do something you consider to be dangerous and disruptive?

I'm not prepared to accept the politically convenient claim that it doesn't need to be fixed. It sounds like the Tea Party.

[James Barber]

Hi Huguenot,

Tha slow speed of technology dissemination in the gas utility industry would be the reason I'd suggest.

[Huguenot]

Hmm, I've been in engineering tender reviews that lasted years for the London Underground. I found them exhaustive, and not short of a few 'genius' cheap American solutions that were obviously bollocks in practice.

I certainly didn't find the engineers unfamiliar with world solutions.

I'm thinking it's more likely that either...

- the US has a different system/problem to ours in the first place and so the proposal doesn't work

or....

- as with the Tea Party, American public services contractors are giving the population what they want (cheap but ineffective short term 'fixes') rather than a solution to the problem

I'll reserve judgment until I can find some expertise on the subject, but in the meantime, the residents of Friern Road should know that there's very good reason for the works.

[DulwichFox]

Not sure how long the new plastic pipes will last, but they will probably outlast the availability

of natural gas who experts estimate will last 50 - 65 years...

Having said that the cost of replacing these pipes plus the regular Gas Price increase will mean

people not being able to afford Gas long before then..

[Huguenot]

4 people die in California USA in at-risk pipes only 50 years old.

The pipes had been 'inspected' using new fangled 'cheap' technology twice in the pevious year.

You can't check cheaply for little leaks and paper over them - it's about systemic failure.

Just to get it all in perspective, the USA has 140 major gas incidents a year, compared with 3.5 in the UK. On an equivalent per head of population basis that would be 28 vs 3.5 a year - almost ten times the incident rate!

There needed to be a $100m bail out.

What would we hoestly prefer? Explosions, dead people and $100m bailouts, or a sensible well thought out strategy to deliver safer communities for all?

[James Barber]

Er we're spending ?15bn over the next decade or so.

You link story states over 2 million miles of pipelines vs. UK 275,000.

US 140 major incidents includes incidents with and without deaths or injuries vs. 3.5 UK incidents involving injuries or deaths a year. BUT 93 UK incidents of 3rd parties damading the UK gas distributor network.

So I'm not clear any of these are comparing like with like.

[Huguenot]

You do however, get my point that they involve cast iron pipes that were 'checked' using cheap tech?

This one was also 'checked' 48 hours before.

Your expenditure is across 35 years, yeah?

But it's anticipated to deliver cost savings that means it costs 5bn in real terms across 35 years.

So maybe just 150m a year then? Big difference from your scary topline figure of 15bn?

Then you ask whether that's a reasonable price to pay for the safety of our communities? As the head count rises in the US it's clear they think tax cuts are more important.

The evidence is that these technologies are none to bright, can't predict catastrophic failure, and the the US actually agrees that plastic is the only way forward?

The only reason they don't have a national strategy is because American politicos can't be bothered to look after their nation.

I'm glad I'm not there.