Water Works

Another interesting side-project (that is to say something not related to the actual erection of the building) was the Water Tap. 

The old building of course had city water service but it was not sufficient to serve a building of this size.  It probably had a one inch pipe going from the city sewer main into the wine store where very little other than a single bathroom was asked of it. 

Our building has 11 bathrooms, five kitchens and most importantly (in terms of potential water consumption) an automatic sprinkler system.  Were that system to be activated thousands of gallons of water would be required in a short time and so a larger pipe is needed to feed the system.

So we paid York Paving to come to our site, bury a 4" pipe leading into the building and then cut open the street and "tap" the city's water main that runs down Stimson Avenue.  This is best done carefully as there are a lot of pipes and sometimes wires layered into the street between the surface and the water main, and the main line itself is under tremendous pressure.    

The "tap", you see, is done "hot".  That is to say, they don't turn off the water.   They cut into an 8" pipe of water under about 80 pounds of pressure per square inch while it is fully pressurized.

They can do this through a little miracle called the "tapping sleeve".  A device that cuts into the steel water main while also capping off that new hole with a new valve until the drill bit can be removed. 

The whole thing is a slow process taking, in our case, parts of three days.   

A trench alongside the "Bella Vino" section of the building where a pipe is laid and directed into a room where the water will be directed to the sprinkler system and then the apartments. 

One worker from York Paving directs another, who operates a backhoe, around several pipes discovered under the street's surface. 

Once the tap is complete they cover everything back up and then our water service is ready for the plumbers and the sprinkler guys to connect.  

The "tapping sleeve" with the saddle connection that attaches to the water main under the avenue.