Cobb County’s Board of Commissioners approved an upgrade Jan. 9 to Kennesaw State’s sewer system because of the increase in students on campus and in the surrounding residential areas.
The county plans to make upgrades in the Pinetree Country Club area and parts of the Kennesaw campus. The AJC reported RDJE Inc. was awarded a contract of nearly $2 million for the upgrade.
The official name of the project is the Pinetree-KSU Outfall Sewer Upgrade. The project engineer, Richard Wittman, believes that construction will start around March 2018 and finish by the end of August.
“As the construction will bump up against the end of the spring quarter, the majority of the on-site construction work will occur during KSU’s summer quarter when campus traffic is significantly reduced,” Wittman said.
According to a map provided by Cobb County, the construction starts on campus on Chastain Road. From there, it will wrap around to Campus Loop Road, which is where most of the traffic would be localized. Despite the construction, the contractors do not anticipate any road closings.
The construction on the Kennesaw campus will take place using a new technique called “pipe bursting,” that has not previously been used to upgrade sewer systems in Cobb County, according to Wittman.
Wittman explained pipe bursting as a way to replace old pipes without having to use traditional equipment and trenching. He said the process requires an “insertion pit,” which is a hole in the ground above the pipe where they can cut a section of it away.
After that, a “reception pit” is needed, which is another hole on the other end of the pipe where the construction will end.
The replacement pipe is fitted with a “bursting head” at the tip. The replacement pipe is fed into the old pipe, which pushes the old pipe out of the reception pit until the replacement pipe is in position.
