More Conduit

This past week, we finished up the conduit work.

All of the conduits run thus far were the services into the building, from the transformers and generators. These were the very deep conduits, as they have to go under the foundation of the building.

Once these were all in place, the process was to backfill. We backfilled to the 3 foot mark, and then left water to run overnight to harden the ground. The next day, the ground was so hard you coudn’t break it with a spade shovel. We felt pretty good about this level compaction.

The final step was to run the conduits necessary for the utility service – the primary high voltage lines that service the transformers. These are all outside, and are only at the 3 foot deep level. So these conduits were run next.

The generators also require some extra wiring for running pumps, and to control when they start and stop. These are run in smaller 1-2 inch conduits.

While this was happening, the site foundation received its stone base.

And by Friday, everything had returned to its normal level.

Electrical Conduit

The site has been very active lately!

We’ve been working on our electrical services. The electrical service for the building is massive. Like, mondo. Like, so big you can’t even fathom until you see it.

We’re starting in just one section and with one service (actually, two services via two transformers, but that can be routed by the internal switchgear as we want), but ultimately we’ll have four sets of these services.

This requires a lot of piping to get into the building. And it has to go under the foundation.

Where the pipe sticks up in the picture above is inside the building. It then runs out underground to the transformers outside of the building.

First steps, dig a BIG hole:

Also, buy a lot of pipe. I think for this trench work we bought just over 10,000 feet of 4″ PVC (that’s almost two miles). We also have somewhere around 4000 4 foot sweeping elbows. This thing is mammoth.

Now, start putting it all in place.

Each electrical service requires 8 conduits, in groups of four.

Here’s one group of four:

And then the next day we had a few groups of 8s installed

After the pipe is laid, we began to backfill:

From the other angle:

Another angle, showing the massive scope of the project: