The Town Council is set to hire an outside firm Tuesday to check the work on one of Little Elm's larger utility jobs: replacing the aging water transmission main that runs beneath Big Leaf Drive.
A consent item on the Nov. 3 agenda would approve a professional services agreement with Geotex Engineering of Denton for materials testing, with an estimated budget of $63,978.
What is being rebuilt
According to the Public Works staff report, the council approved a construction contract with J&L Construction in June to take out the deteriorated 20-inch main and put in a 24-inch transmission line, plus a parallel 8-inch pipe that will carry service connections to customers.
Splitting those jobs into two pipes is the point of the design, staff wrote: once it is done, a repair on the big line will no longer mean shutting off water to every customer tied into it.
Geotex would test trench backfill, welded pipe joints, the flowable fill around the pipe, the compacted and lime-treated soil under the pavement, sidewalk base and the new concrete. Its proposal calls for density checks at set intervals, observation of reinforcing steel, concrete cylinders broken at seven and 28 days, and pavement cores at least every 300 feet.
The town will be billed for actual tests at the firm's unit rates, the estimate cannot be exceeded without town approval, and any work needing a professional engineer is billed at $250 an hour. Staff said the money comes from water impact fees and capital reserves.
