New Mohegan Park water tank being erected piece by piece
Norwich — If you want to see a live Tetris game going on, check out the construction of the new $3.1 million, 2.5-million-gallon water tank on Judd Road in Mohegan Park.
The new concrete water tank is replacing the massive steel 5-million-gallon, 140-foot-diameter tank that sat at the edge of Judd Road since 1971. The old tank was disassembled in July. The project is designed to improve water quality and circulation for customers on the Norwich Public Utilities water system. The smaller new ground-level tank will stand 86 feet tall, but only 73 feet in diameter.
The smaller, modern design of the tank allows water to circulate more frequently, improving quality, NPU officials said. The concrete tank also will require less maintenance, NPU spokesman Chris Riley said.
The project is funded through the state Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, with 92 percent, or $2.86 million, in a low-interest 2 percent loan, and the remaining 8 percent in a grant totaling $249,512, Riley said.
On Thursday, crews from DN Tanks of Wakefield, Mass., hoisted pie-shaped pieces of pre-cast concrete one at a time to the top of the temporary cylindrical scaffold frame, fitting the pieces in place to form the inner layer of the roof on the new tank. On the ground in neat stacks were 19 wall panels, each weighing 97,500 pounds, the inner wall panels 4 inches thick, and the outer panels 4.5 inches thick.
DN Tanks created the roof and wall panels on site, pouring the cement into forms, allowing it to harden, testing the thickness and quality before stacking them to prepare for the assembly that started this week, company site supervisor Aaron Rasbach said.
“To move something of this size by truck would be nearly impossible,” he said.
Once all the concrete panels and roof are assembled in place, workers will enter a small rectangular hole in the structure to disassemble and remove the temporary scaffolding piece by piece.
Project chief engineer Michael Harrington said DN’s original owner, Francis X. Crowley, patented the company’s process for building pre-cast concrete water tanks back in 1966. The company has been using the method since then and, since the early 1980s, has been using this method exclusively.
“Because it makes so much sense to precast the piece on the ground and test it before using it,” Harrington said.
The tank shell is expected to be completed by Thanksgiving, and crews from subcontractor Xenelis Construction will arrive to install the network of water pipes that will feed water into the tank and draw it out. DN’s contract with NPU calls for the tank to be operational by Dec. 15, Rasbach said.
Xenelis crews will return after winter to complete site work and landscaping on the site.
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.
