Lazy H

Owner:

Burrito Kitchen

General Contractor:

Mishler Construction

Scope Of Work

This project was a little last minute.  We had bid on doing the whole Burrito Kitchen project which wasn't scheduled to start until late spring 2020.  However, we were approached in early October 2019 about installing the water and sewer mains up to the property line because the site developer wanted to pave the road by the end of October.  We hurried to get a bid in and got a vac truck scheduled right away to pothole the existing water main, sanitary sewer and a high pressure gas line our proposed sewer was going to cross.  Unfortunately, our proposed sewer line was going to cross right through the gas line.  This delayed starting the project while the engineer, GC and city worked to redesigned the sewer to tie in at a different manhole.  This delay put us past the point of being able to get the job done before paving was scheduled, but the developer decided to delay paving until the spring anyway.

Burrito Kitchen still wanted the work done so it wouldn't be an issue in the spring.  So with a signed contract in mid-November, we jumped right in to laying the 550' of sewer line with two manholes and a short service from the last manhole to the property line (see pics).  Because the elevation of our sewer line nearly matched the elevation of the water main, we also had to encase the sewer line with reinforced concrete at the two points where our 8" fire hydrant line and 6" fire line were going to cross over it.  We got lucky between the scheduling of our concrete vendor and the weather, getting both manhole bases and both encasements poured as a winter storm rolled in.  We finished in the dark as the flurries started to fall and we quickly covered everything with insulating blankets.

With the sewer line and manholes backfilled with passing moisture and compaction tests (see pics), we started work on our water lines.  The 8" hydrant line was a cut-in with a 12" valve on the main.  The 6" fire line was a wet tap.  Although they were short runs of only about 40', each line took a full day for three guys to install because each one had to be raised over the sanitary sewer line encasements.  This was the opposite of a lowering and we're still not sure if there's an industry standard term for going over something with a water line - an "uppering"?  A "raising"?  A "reverse lowering"?  Regardless, where the water lines were raised, they were only going to have a little over three feet of cover from finish grade, so we also insulated them (see pics).

While we were installing the water lines, we had the sewer lines and manholes tested.  The sewer line passed its pressure test, but neither of the manholes passed their initial vacuum tests.  The company we hired to do the testing grouted and sealed each manhole until they passed.

Once the water lines were installed up to the property line, they were both capped off, marked with tall 2x4's and backfilled with passing moisture and compaction tests.  We graded everything back to where it was when we started (see pic), set protective fencing and markers around our manholes and valve boxes and spread a fresh layer of road base on the road for emergency vehicle access.

This project was pretty straightforward with no real issues.  A rarity!  The only take away for us was in the bidding phase.  There's going to be some serious sticker shock when you go from a 6" or 8" water main tie-in with a couple hundred feet of pipe down to a few dozen feet of pipe.  To a customer who hasn't seen what goes into the work, it can be difficult to understand the drastic difference in by-the-foot pricing.  A large portion of the time and effort involved is in the tie-in, but with a couple hundred feet of pipe, the per-foot price doesn't look too bad.  The cost of this tie in was averaged out on only about 40' of pipe and the cost was compounded even more by the "raising" taking up a quarter of the total length.  We had to give a much more detailed description of pricing for this short run than we usually do for longer runs of pipe.