You know you’re making progress on
construction when you start celebrating your ‘lasts.’ Last excavation to be
completed. Check! Last steel liner
inserted into the tunnel. Check! Now we have another: the last valve to be
installed underground.
And not just ANY valve. This is a
valve that is 8 feet in diameter that will eventually divert water from the
existing piping connections into the New Irvington Tunnel. This Butterfly Valve regulates flow within
the pipe with a rotating a disc within the pipe. When closed, the disc, or
butterfly, completely blocks flow. When
open , as seen in this sample of a butterfly valve from a dam in Japan, the
disc rotates one quarter to allow flow to pass by.
And operating this valve is no easy
task. If you were to manually crank it closed (or ‘actuate it’, as our
operators say), you’d need a whopping 400 revolutions. Our operators use electric actuators for this
very reason, and will be able to operate this valve remotely.
We
hope to actuate this valve to bring the New Irvington Tunnel into service this Fall!
New Irvington Team installs final valve
Sample Butterfly Valve
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
