April 20, 2015

Steve Vick International has been working with Corus Process Engineering (CPE) to provide sealing solutions for redundant sludge and effluent lines at Sellafield. The latest project is to eliminate any potential fault scenarios on the plant and reduce operator dose uptake during implementation by avoiding the need to drain the effluent tank pipes of radioactive sludge before the sealing...

Steve Vick International Ltd was recently retained to carry out works at Chapelcross for the nuclear decommissioning company Magnox North. The works required Steve Vick International engineers to seal off a number of redundant manholes – 43 in total – each containing between two to six inlet and outlet pipes of varying sizes from 20mm to 12”. The deepest manhole was 1.5 metres and the...

The project involved filling a sump and 3-4 metres of redundant 4” clay pipe that contained residual contamination from historic operations. Following several visits to the site and specific workshop trials – and based on previous experience of similar jobs for UKAEA – Steve Vick International successfully completed the sealing off operation using the Foam Bag™ system, in half a...

Procord, the company which manages the land and buildings at Winfrith Power Station, needed to safely seal off two 180mm (6”) underground pipes. These pipes connect pits that are, respectively, 43 metres and 28 metres apart. As the pipes run under a concrete road that would have been costly to dig up and reinstate, Procord decided against removing the pipes, preferring instead to completely...

Specifically, the company was commissioned to design a method of safely removing one metre lengths of ducting without contaminated particles becoming airborne, to carry out on-site trials and subsequently supply application equipment and sealants which Sellafield operatives would be trained to use. The method devised by Steve Vick involved using the company’s patented FOAMBAG™ technique,...

Steve Vick International has been involved in a pipe sealing project at Sellafield where “a complex set of decommissioning challenges” exist in dealing with the 60 year old First Generations Magnox Storage Pond (FGMSP). The scope of the work covered the removal of redundant pipework in a high radiation area and then cleaning and sealing a contaminated pond wall. The redundant 10cm...

RSRL Harwell first approached Steve Vick International about the use of their technology to tie down the contamination after initial investigations by Aurora Health Physics revealed higher levels of contamination than anticipated inside the storage tubes. SVI were asked to provide a proposal for the project which was to be one of the most technically challenging foaming operations SVI had...

In a project to renew a 24” cast water main in Plymouth for South West Water, Brent Ltd used a pipe pushing machine manufactured by Steve Vick International to insert, in one push, half a kilometre of 400mm diameter PE pipe weighing a total of 22.5 tonnes. The operation was part of an ongoing 2.5 km mains renewal contract. South West Water and Brent have formed an integrated partnership to...

Steve Vick International was recently called in to solve a problem of rat infestation at a householder’s property in Cardiff. The large property had recently been renovated and extended resulting in the need for a new drainage system. The new kitchen in the home was built partly over a previous downstairs cloakroom where the vertical WC drain had not been blocked off.  After the owners had...

Farmoor supplies water to areas including Oxford and Swindon and the contractors were given only a 12 hour window to complete the project. Damar sub-contracted the cutting operation to Steve Vick International Ltd who used the N600 Keel cutter supplied by South+West Pipe Tools. The hydraulically powered machine automatically tracks around the circumference of the pipe wall whilst the tungsten...

A leaking drain which was causing waste water to enter the basement pool complex of a luxury Kensington town house was successfully sealed off by Dyno-Rod using the DRAINBLOCK BAG™ technique developed by Steve Vick International. Dyno-Rod franchisee, Candid Services Ltd of Staines, Middlesex, were called in when the home owners found water on the floor around their underground swimming pool....

After extensive research, Wessex Water selected the new trailers because they found them to dispense pipe very smoothly and quickly thanks to a hydraulically raised hexagonal central drum configuration. Wayne Johnson, explains, “With the trailers we were using we had to allocate two or three operatives to assist in dispensing the PE pipe but with these new trailers, the pipe comes off so...