Our specialists replaced the deteriorated, concrete-encased twin-heating pipeline under Bartók Béla Road in Budapest’s District XI. The works were ordered by the Hungarian capital’s district-heating supplier, FŐTÁV.

As part of the reconstruction job, we replaced the existing DN 500 main line and branch-offs with pre-insulated DN 500/670 and DN100/200 pipes. Prior to accessing the 360-metre-long section between Bertalan Lajos Street and Szent Gellért Square with open-ditch technology, we had to substitute the existing sleeves and pipes with a temporary line. Subsequently, large-scale earthworks could go ahead, including the shoring of the work trench with a rollbox shoring system. Due to the characteristics of the site, expansion loops could not be installed to balance out the thermal expansion of the pipeline. As a solution, we applied so-called thermal pre-stressing: this technology entails the heating of the installed pipes to half of the designed operating temperature, and waiting for the expansion to take place. Finally, we rushed to re-fill the 360-metre-long, 3.3-metre-wide work trench.