April 2021 Vol. 76 No. 4
Features
Delivering Water and Sewer Services to Savannah’s Manufacturing Center
A crew of 10 horizontal directional drilling (HDD) professionals with D&C Directional Boring, based in Townsend, Ga., is wrapping up a long summer project outside Savannah’s busy ports.
Its work has been part of the Savannah Economic Development Authority’s (SEDA) construction of the Savannah Manufacturing Center – a 2.5-million-square-foot (70,792.1-cubic-meter) industrial development that will soon be a logistical transportation hub to many of the country’s largest tech and consumer retail companies. D&C’s task on this project involved installing 24-inch HDPE forced sewer and 30-inch fusible PVC water mainlines through the area’s wetlands.
Led by the husband and wife team of Dennis and Carla Williams, their oldest son Tommy, and grandsons Nathan and Brent, in the last 10 years D&C has gone from a one-utility drill company to the Savannah area’s go-to trenchless water and sewer contractor. Now, operating as many as three crews at once with multiple utility and maxi drilling rigs, pneumatic boring and bursting tools, D&C specializes in municipality installation and rehabilitation work.
SEDA Savannah Manufacturing Center
As with any major industrial development project, there is a great deal of planning and construction involved in the SEDA’s Savannah Manufacturing Center project before the first business sign can be hung. For instance, the location of the center presented several challenges for developers because of the amount of wetland area within and near the area. To bring water and sewer services to the site, the SEDA project called for both open-cut and trenchless methods.
“The project was broken down into two phases: onsite SEDA and offsite SEDA,” Dennis Williams explained. “Almost all of the installation work onsite was drilled, while a combination of methods was used for the offsite work to connect the onsite piping with Savannah’s existing infrastructure. Our team handled the HDD work onsite and offsite.”
The bores for the SEDA project were quite involved, said Williams, so D&C team members needed to pool their resources to complete the work. This project was one of the first for the company’s newly commissioned Vermeer D220x300.
“We also own Vermeer D24x40 and D100x120 Series II Navigator HDDs,” added Williams. “The D100x120 Series II has been a workhorse ever since we purchased it. But, for this type of work, we needed something bigger.”
The onsite bores, for which the crew needed the bigger maxi rig, included an 1,800-foot (548.6-meter) bore for a 30-inch water main, an 1,800-foot (548.6-meter) bore for 24-inch forced-sewer main and 1,800-foot (548.6-meter) bore of 6-inch forced-sewer main.
For the mainline work, D&C paired its 242,100-pound (1,076.6-kN) rig with the Vermeer R250C reclaimer to recycle all of the drilling fluids. Williams described the ground conditions as a “gumbo” – mixture of sand and clay – that would swell if the drilling fluid wasn’t mixed just right.
“We used three-to-four bags of bentonite for every 1,000 gallons (3,785.4 liters) of water, as well as a polymer to keep the clay from swelling, to make a 42-second mud,” he said. “It did a nice job of carrying cuttings, while maintaining the hole integrity and keeping our tooling clean. Also, the R250C kept up just fine through it all during the pilot bore and with every reamer pass.”
Each of the three bores reached depths between 20 feet and 35 feet (7.6 meters and 10.7 meters), and the crew averaged around 100 feet (30.5 meters) of drilling per hour on the pilot bores. After completing the pilot bore with a 12-inch (30.5-centimeter) bit, the crew made a reamer pass with a 24-inch (61-centimeter) fly cutter reamer, followed by a 36-inch (91.4-centimeter) fly cutter it pulled pipe behind.
Williams had some concern about how the reclaimer would handle the thicker returns the crew was getting while reaming, because of the size of cuts they decided to make with each pass. But everything went according to plan.
“We rented a 6x3 assist pump to move mud from one pit to another before it went to the reclaimer,” he explained. “We figured if the mud got too thick, we could thin it out a bit in the pit before it went through the recycler. We really didn’t need to do that, though. The R250C did a great job of keeping up with that big drill.”
Equipment pairing
For the D&C drill operator, Joe Brown, adjusting to the D220x300 from the D100x120 drill was pretty easy.
“While the D220x300 is a lot bigger, the controls are almost exactly the same – there’s just a lot more power at my fingertips,” Brown explained. “In fact, I had a chance to run a rented Vermeer D330x500 drill a couple of weeks before we got our drill on an emergency 24-inch water main installation job. I went from one to the other and then back without any issues – they all feel pretty much the same.”
D&C has also used its R250C reclaimer with all three drills. “We originally invested in the reclaimer to pair with our D100x120 Series II because most municipalities around here now require drill crews to recycle their drilling fluids,” said Williams.
“But when we were called out on that emergency water main project, there wasn’t much time to think about finding a larger recycling system. I talked with Ken Coffield at Vermeer Southeast about how he thought the R250C would keep up with D330x500, and he said it could probably handle it in the ground conditions we were working. Everything went great. So, when we got our D220x300, we knew it would be able to keep up in similar conditions, and it has.”
While the reclaimer is a 250-gallon-per-minute (946.4-liter-per-minute) recycling unit, it may be possible to pair it with a larger HDD unit in certain environments. However, the drill operator needs to be very disciplined with monitoring pullback speeds to keep solids loading under control in the return fluids.
D&C crews worked in similar ground conditions for the offsite SEDA work, so they stuck with the same drilling fluid mixture that worked onsite. “The bores were shorter, but there were more of them to do, and we weren’t just crossing under wetlands — there were highways, too,” said Williams.
The offsite SEDA bores included a pair of 1,100-foot (335.3-meter) bores for 30-inch water and 30-inch sewer mains. The crew also did four 800-foot (243.8-meter) long connection bores for 24-inch forced-sewer lines. Everything went according to plan for the D&C HDD professionals.
“Our team did an excellent job on this project. Most of our people have been with Carla and me since almost the beginning. They show up ready to work every day, and when it’s time to go home and relax, we all seem to hang out with each other then, too. We’re all pretty close,” said Williams.
Looking back
According to Carla, her husband Dennis as always been one of the best contractors in the business, but it wasn’t until they made the shift from small-diameter utility installs to large-diameter water and sewer work that he found his true calling.
“He was asked to bid on a water and sewer project around 10 years ago and got it,” said Carla. “Soon after, we put every penny of our savings into the business, so they would have what they needed to get the job done.
“Those were scary days, but it’s all been worth it. We’ve been able to spend our time with great people doing what we love. Dennis handles the bidding and managing the crews, and I help out with the books and wherever else I’m needed,” she said.
Williams added that they have built a great business as a family. “It’s been a huge blessing to have our kids and grandchildren as part of the business, as well as my very supportive wife,” he explained.
“Carla works full time running a convenience store and makes sure all our business paperwork is getting done. She’s always been supportive of what I want to do and understands when we need to add new equipment to make that next step as a company. I don’t think we’ll ever grow too much beyond the kind of work we do now, but whatever we do, I know we’ll do it as a family.” •
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
D&C Directional Boring, (912) 858-3678
Vermeer Corp., (888) 837-6337, vermeer.com
Pictured from D&C Directional Boring are (left to right): Tommy Leggett, Nathan Leggett, Carla Williams, Dennis Williams and Brent Leggett.
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