First, the answer to Vol. 19 (last week).
Thanks for all of your guesses! The answers are as follows:
A) The panel and seam length were approximately 410 feet. The QC used the common procedure of dividing the distance in half each time for isolation, which resulted in 8 additional holes.
B) At lunch (mid-shift) I was informed of the issue by a QA on my crew who said this seam might be a good area for a destruct. They had been working on trying to find the leak for over about 2-hours at that point and it took about 2-hours more to find it. To the QC’s credit, he spent a lot of time (more than the total test time) trying to ensure good seals around the needle and around the end where sealed before cutting another hole in the geomembrane. 4-hours lost to a damage that shouldn’t have been there, and in my opinion should have been caught by the welding operator during seam prep.
I did suggest to the installer that they cut out that 200-foot section of seam and fusion weld in a cap, rather than leave an additional 7 extrusion repairs in that section and was unfortunately overruled by them and the owners representative.
In these blog posts, Do You See What Glen Sees, I will present a photograph or short video related to earthwork or geosynthetics construction and have you identify the significance of what you’re seeing.
It could be things being done correctly or incorrectly. Primarily, these will be things that impact quality.
In addition to my blog, I’ll post this content on X and LinkedIn. You can post your response on one of those two.
I’ll give you my thoughts on each photo or video when I post the next installment.
Do you see what I see? Or did you find something I missed? I’m excited to find out!
