GAS SUPPLY TO NEW HOSPITAL

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27989, 8 June 1956, Page 10

GAS SUPPLY TO NEW HOSPITAL

(Concluded)

BIG DIRECT MAIN BEING LAID

USE FOR COOKING AND HEATING

To give direct supply from the works, a gas main, 12 inches in diameter, is being laid from the new hospital at Cashmere to the gasworks at Waltham. The main will supply 142,000,000 cubic feet of gas a year for cooking and heating at the hospital. The contractor for the laying of the main, the Scott Engineering Company, has completed the first section from the hospital to Colombo street, via Ashgrove terrace, and has reached Tennyson street on the second section to Huxley street. This is the first reticulation contract undertaken in Christchurch by the company, which built the pipe line for an oil company from Lyttelton to Woolston over the Port Hills.

The main of cast iron spun pipes, fitted with flexible rubber joints, has a length of three miles and a quarter. Designed to carry gas at high pressures, it is of adequate size to meet any probable extension of demand in the future. It will carry in the initial stages 60,000 cubic feet of gas an hour.

A booster will be installed at the gas works to maintain the pipe line pressure, and breaking-down governors will be fitted in the plant room at the hospital to maintain a constant low pressure against the consumer’s appliances. Two large gas meters of German design, manufactured by the Holmes Company, of Huddersfield, are being imported by the Christchurch Gas Company and the Hospital Board. The gas will pass through both meters in series.

In the basement of the hospital, four Cochran sinu-flow gas-fired boilers will be installed, to give a capacity of 21,5001 b of steam an hour. Eight feet in diameter and nine feet high the boilers will provide steam for heating, space heating, cooking and sterilising. When the second section the pipe laying is completed, the remaining section will be to the Waltham road overbridge. The overbridge section will be handled by manifold, comprising a series of 6-inch diameter gas mains in a specially prepared duct on the eastern side of the bridge. The mains then go down into Waltham road and will enter the gasworks at what was Browning street, a public road acquired many years ago by the company.

From the hospital to Colombo street, the maximum depth to which the Scott Company’s hydraulic digger had to work was 3 feet 6 inches, the pipes being at a definite grading to a low point for the collection of moisture from the gas. A spell of fine weather made for speedy work but since the work has been under way in Colombo street the weather has not been good for work in sandy and loamy country. Each section of pipe is tested under air pressure before being passed and filled in and a very fine crack in one PiP e caused a hold-up. To consolidate the road, the back-fill is being hand rammed.

In a few days, a difficult section of the route will be reached. At Tennyson street, the line has to be laid under the stormwater culvert. The depth of the excavation will be six feet.