Ballard Marine Construction hired the services of Vanport to assist with the fabrication of a construction aid for an interesting project they were involved in. They had the objective of installing thousands of lineal ft of 18” & 12” HDPE Sewage Piping, anchored in position with large concrete collars. To efficiently set the piping they needed a spreader bar that could keep the flexible HDPE piping straight while also carrying the weight of the concrete collars.
Vanport fabricated the 100ft long spreader bar in our shop. The spreader bar was constructed of 24” OD carbon steel pipe with a wall thickness of 5/8”. For transportation purposes the spreader was made modular in design and comprised of (3) sections, one 50ft section and two 25ft sections. The section ends were equipped with 1-1/2” thick steel plates welded on their ends, each housing (16) 1.25” diameter holes to allow the section ends to bolt together. Each section was outfitted with (2) lifting points that enabled ease of assembly and safe operations while under full construction load. The lifting points were built from 2” thick carbon steel plate and fit-up in a manner that they passed entirely through the 24” pipe, allowing for robust welds in many locations.
From a fabrication standpoint, this was a very simple project. It is the application of the fabrication that we found interesting with this project.