Pig the pipe.

Gas pipe pigging case study;

The gaspipes.co.uk team recently undertook a project to investigate why a customer’s gas pressure was ‘bouncing’. By that we mean the pressure fluctuated on the newly installed underground plastic pipe.

Water in the gas pipe

This fluctuating pressure needed investigating. Whilst we had our suspicions this bouncing was due to water in the pipe. An investigation was carried out using a specialist camera. We were required to isolate and then gain access to the pipe via removing valves to allow us to camera the pipe. This camera was 80m of reel that would allow us to send a camera up the pipe. The camera equipment allows us to see in real-time and record our findings. Water ingress was likely due to part of the pipework being exposed to rain during the installation. The camera quickly showed us there was significant water in all of the pipes. This project relies on good weather and is time intensive.

Once the camera work had been completed, the footage was saved to a memory stick we began removing the water from the pipe. The engineers decided to pig the pipe with a sponge pig and rope. We fed a length of rope up the length of the pipe that was to be pigged. We utilised the camera reel by attaching one end of the rope to the camera and sending it up the pipe. Once the engineer had confirmed they had received their end of the rope, they would detach it from the camera and we would bring the camera back. The end of the rope would be attached to a PIG (see picture). An engineer at the other side would gently pull the PIG through the pipe to pull the water out of the pipe. PIG refers to a pipeline intervention gadget. 

This would be repeated on the same section of pipe if necessary. We then carried out on all sections of pipe where had discovered water.

Specialist Gas Pipe Team

To find out more information please contact us and one of our team would be happy to help!