Page 24 - PCCAJournal3rdQuarter2011

rodders in to and out of conduits.

“I’ve got to try that,” Steve said, and he brought it back to his crew working on the UM project. Burly men, some who had been hand rodding for 14 years, took one look and laughed at it, recalled Sellenriek. “They said ‘we can whip it.’”

With his skeptical crew, Sellenriek ran the company’s ﬁrst test run for the Powered Duct Rod Pusher with an existing pipe run duct, a 4-inch-wide conduit and a 1 / 2 -inch ﬁber op-tic cable. The duct was already occupied with copper cable. No sweat, no strain, and 20 minutes later the section was ﬁnished—and no one was laughing.

The Powered Duct Rod Pusher has revolutionized Sellen-riek Construction’s approach on the UM Project and others. No longer does it take two to three workers deep in a man-hole to place the cable. The reduced labor helps keep projects on budget.

“When we were hand rodding, it took six men on the proj-ect; now we’re down to four,” Sellenriek said. “That’s two men who can be used more cost efﬁciently elsewhere in the company.”

Roy Burwell, a foreman with Sellenriek Construction, called the rod pusher a “wonderful thing.” He said, “Before we had it, we had to switch people a lot because the work puts a lot of strain on your back and arms. Now it’s simple, we just back up to the hole and set it up. The machine takes just minutes to set up and is very user-friendly.”

With less wear and tear on his crew physically, Sellenriek readily recognizes the product’s preventive attributes—a greatly reduced risk of having to deal with workers com-pensation claims. Another plus with the Powered Duct Rod Pusher is that it has a vastly smaller footprint than heavy

equipment, which disturbs the ground by its mere presence. UM is very protective of its campus aesthetics since it is designated a botanic garden with more than 5,000 trees and 650 varieties of plants. And a number of the university’s buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“The Powered Duct Rod Pusher helps his company comply with UM’s strict environmental policies such as no ground disturbance permitted under the drip-line of trees,” Sellenriek said.

Safety concerns were also eased on this busy pedestrian-ﬁlled campus. Previously, upwards of 300 to 500 feet of rods were on the ground, sometimes wrapped around the corners of buildings, whenever there was a blocked conduit that needed repair.

“Thanks to the counter on the rod pusher, we know we’re exactly where we want to be and not digging after a ghost,” Sellenriek said.

It was immediately obvious to Sellenriek that GMP’s Powered Duct Rod Pusher packs an ef-ﬁcient punch, pushing and pulling with forces up to 300 pounds and rod speeds up to 130 feet per minute. It accurately measures footage and speed with an electronic monitoring system that works in either direction with a readout that can be scaled to feet or meters.

Other features include rod access areas for wip-ing the rod clean during the pull-back operation to keep mud and silt out of the drive belt area. It comes with a package of rod wiper pads. Also