Workers fit right in to pipe repair job

It takes a special person to crawl through a pipe 24 inches around, they say. A crew is doing just that under the city's streets.

By JON WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 7, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- They work underground, creeping hundreds of feet through a pipe narrower than your average garbage can.

Sometimes they can hear traffic rumbling on the street above. The bigger trucks make the ground vibrate.

[Times photo: Dirk Shadd] Dan Fouch, 25, a pipe liner with J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, emerges from a 24-inch diameter pipe beneath Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street N.

Four "D" batteries power their two-inch head lamps. The only other light is a speck at the pipe's other end, maybe a football field's length away.

Break time might mean staying in the pipe, resting in place. Pals can send in a sandwich or soda.

"Outside of that, it's just a job," said Greg Van Horn.

A job that doesn't always meet the eye.

Van Horn is part of a crew sealing joints through about 4,000 feet of 24-inch water pipe eight feet under Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street N between Ninth and 22nd avenues.

The best and least expensive way to do such work is from the inside, engineers say.

Most mortals would consider the subsurface work uncomfortable at best, and probably claustrophobic and frightening. Crew members shrug off the notion. The work doesn't faze them.

"If I was nervous, I wouldn't go in," Van Horn said.

Frank Hunt, known on the job as "Duke," is the superintendent. He has done this work for 30 years, crawling countless pipes. He still does, but at 58 years old leaves the 16- and 20-inch models to the younger, smaller men.

Hunt looks for men or women who are mechanically inclined, physically and mentally tough, fairly strong and preferably unmarried to make travel easier. The 75-year-old company, based in Hackensack, N.J., sends its crews all over the country.

"You can pretty well evaluate a guy until he gets in the pipe," Hunt said. Some, he said, prove unable to handle the close quarters.

"Then if he gets in there 300 feet, you have to back him out and get rid of him," Hunt said.

Crew members are required to attend "confined entry" classes, which offer instruction similar to what firefighters and rescue workers receive.

Like many construction workers, the pipe specialists appear to be a rough-and-ready lot.

"We don't want any mama's boys," Hunt said. "They aren't the way they are from singing too loud in church."

Most are of medium height and -- no surprise -- slender; not skinny, but wiry. Hunt said seven men take turns going through the pipes. Each one might stay down as long as two hours.

They wear typical work clothes: jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. To go through the pipe, they push themselves along on a dolly a bit bigger than a skateboard.

They take along what's needed for the job: two leak seals that look like fat rubber bands and four stainless steel rings that hold in the seals.

The $118,000 St. Petersburg project means fixing small leaks in about 250 lead joints. The joints connect pipe sections and are 18 feet apart. The leaks are caused by traffic vibrations, engineers said. If allowed to enlarge, they eventually could cause street sections to buckle.

The cast-iron pipes, which carry drinking water, were laid in the 1940s, said John Riera, a city public utilities construction supervisor. The pipes themselves are in good shape, he said.

Contractor J. Fletcher Creamer & Son is expected to finish by the middle of next week. As of late last week, workers were running a little ahead of schedule.

Brian Fouch took the first trip through the pipe last Wednesday. He carried a plastic garbage bag filled with rags to clear the tube of residual water. The project's first section is 422 feet, and Fouch traveled it in about 10 minutes, using the rag bag to push water ahead of him and out the other end.

Fouch popped out with a little mud on his knees, but no other sign he'd just traveled more than a city block eight feet under. He went to grab a soda and cigarette.

Jerry Morrone, a city public utility engineer, wanted a look, too.

He put on a paper-fiber coverall over his clothes, climbed into the entry pit and picked up a dolly. The pipe gulped him in.

Morrone made the trip in a shade less than six minutes. "That's because I was trying to get out," he said, noting that the pinpoint of daylight at the other end shows up pretty quickly -- but is farther away than it appears.

A weightlifter and a rugby coach and player, Morrone was impressed with the workout the jaunt provided. "Upper body to lower body," he said.

Workers trundle through the pipe using feet and hands, sometimes elbows and knees.

"I was trying different ways to push off," Morrone said.

Other city employees crawl pipes regularly.

Tom Smith often inspects and fixes the pipes that carry away storm water. The smallest he enters is 24 inches.

"My main thing is, I'm very careful. You're very cautious about what's around you. You take your time. You don't try to rush. It doesn't bother me," said Smith, who is 5 foot 7 and weighs 140 to 150 pounds.

He has seen one alligator in his nine years with the city, catching it in a spotlight beam. The gator's eyes glowed and it "scuffled away," Smith said.

"Tom's a gamer," said Mike Connors, the city stormwater director. He also noted that the saurian's presence was not surprising.

"There are alligators in our storm drain conduits any time of the year," Connors said.

Safety is a priority for any pipe worker.

Hunt said his crews routinely monitor air quality in pipes. Typically, the worst thing they might find in a water pipe is water, he said, but sewer or gas pipes could present more dangerous problems, such as fumes.

Heat can be a problem but usually isn't. A machine blows in air from the outside, serving as a kind of air conditioner. Turn it up too high, and "You can freeze yourself out," Hunt said.

An alarm system is ready to use if needed.

"One long blast on an air horn," Hunt said. "You come out with nothing but yourself." Fumes, a wreck on the street above, or a broken water main might be cause for a quick exit.

But Hunt said he never has had an emergency. Once on a job, a heavy rain sent water from a flooding river into a pipe -- but Hunt already had been concerned about a storm and had not sent anyone in.

The pipe specialists hear about the jobs through word of mouth and advertising. They earn $15 an hour to start, Hunt said. If a job is in a state with prevailing wage laws, they might get $30 an hour -- and an emergency might boost the pay to $60.

People who can maneuver in the smaller pipes also get paid more.

And one thing more, Hunt noted, with no pun intended:

There are openings in this line of work.

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