Fifty-year-old pipes replaced

Narrabri’s Maitland Street upgrade is proceeding on schedule and to plan, the Council’s director infrastructure delivery Darren Raeck said.

The first stage of the work is the replacement of old town water main pipes on the western side of Maitland Street.

“The old asbestos cement pipeline being removed is in pretty poor condition, leaking at virtually every joint,” said Mr Raeck.

“The rubber ring joints on the pipes are about 50 years old and have reached the end of their useful life.

“They have tapping saddles which run off the mains into the adjacent shops and almost all of those are leaking so all of the connections to the shops are being replaced as well as the pipeline.

“The new pipe material is ‘Blue Brute’ PVC which will take water pressure about four times as much as we need and has a rigid wall strength which makes it good for underneath roads,” Mr Raeck said.

“We are also doing the laterals up Dewhurst and Doyle streets to ensure we eliminate as much leakage as possible in the main street area.

“We found a rock layer had been installed in the road to stabilise the soils when wet, which is allowing the water to transfer and move across the road surface.

“That’s why people are seeing a lot of ‘heaving’ in the middle of the road.

“We will probably remove those layers and reinstate a gravel layer and potentially even stabilise one of the layers to prevent water from moving from layer to layer.”

The contractor is working 10 days on and four days off and trying to do as much on the weekends as possible, Mr Raeck said.

“They are expecting to get through the next section between Dewhurst Street and Doyle in the next 10 days.

“That will be followed by 10 days in the third block final section.

“Work is proceeding per plan and once we have done the water main and completed our geotechnical testing we will come up with a road surface design and start to construct the new road surface,” said Mr Raeck.

There will be a lull between the completion of the water main work and the start of construction of the road surface to allow businesses to trade uninterrupted.