This outing included the installation of one seal as a fit test to make sure that the others, to be manufactured at the same specifications, will properly fit the culvert. HydraTech was called in to fortify this aging culvert and with this particular joint, install over previous repair attempts that were failing.  This culvert was an elliptical storm drain, 15 by 9 feet, that ran under US-10 and M-18.

I functioned as a hands-on instructor that walked their crew through the process so that they thoroughly understood how to install the HydraTite seal. During this trip, I only installed one demo seal in the culvert as a fit test. The active flow required a stand to be set up to hold supplies out of the water. An important aspect of installing with the active flow is expanding the upstream band first. This just makes the process easier. If you expand the downstream band first the rubber has a tendency to shift.  The rubber was placed over the joint, steel was positioned in the rubber’s channel, four anchors holes were drilled, the anchors were inserted and the bands expanded in roughly 2 hours.

This time was a simple single HydraTite seal installation, but they are expected to install 24 more HydraTite seals at a later date.