On Wednesday morning Harris Water Main was replacing a lead water main with a new copper water main. As part of the company standard protocol, the crew began excavating in the roadway to expose the tap connection which connects the lead pipe, to the city water main.
After ninety minutes of digging, they reached the city water main and found an old “driven tap” that was extremely fragile as it was basically hanging out of the city main by a thread. The foremen was aware of the conditions, for this reason he instructed his team to be extremely careful when preparing for the new tap which was going to be installed later that morning.
**Driven taps were installed before the current day tapping tools which are drilled into the city main. Driven taps were actually installed on the city main with a hammer. Driven taps are no longer legal in NYC.
Driven tap
Before he knew it, the tap had blown out of the city main due to the pressure and created a heavy stream of water shooting into the air.
The team was quick to plug the hole in the city main with a wood broom stick until the DEP arrived to install the new tap connection. Harris also installed a sleeve around the city main to ensure that the old tap location would not become of any problem in the future.
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DEP installing new tap |
Tapping machine |
Once the tap issue was resolved, the crew continued working to install the new copper water main as usual.
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The copper is installed |
Final tap connection |
The existing lead water main had been replaced with new copper by 3pm the same day
