PROJECT
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expert and will advise on plans, Solomon says for a job
of this magnitude you have to have the professional
wet services engineers on board for peace of mind to
work out quantities, sizes of materials, system layout on
a drawings and provide a comprehensive report. This
spells out how they arrive at calculations and why it is
the way it is.
The drawings will specify the pipe and valve sizes but
leave the actual purchase and transport of them to site
to the plumber.
Scope of work
Solomon says: “Our job as plumbers was the pipework
connections into the tank and the pipework out of the
tank, as well as to and from the pumphouse – the
booster pumps and the pressure vessel – and everything
leading from the pumphouse towards Gallagher Estate,
connecting to a water line which was installed by the
civils company.
Graham Solomon, owner of plumbing contractor Goldmark Plumbing.
“It’s actually a fairly straightforward process – the major
difference is in the industrial size of the water tank.” The
tank itself is located at the far end of the open-grounds
parking field, several hundred metres from the entrance
to Gallagher, which Solomon describes as the closest
piece of available ground.
“One of the main construction challenges was that the
foundation for the tank had to be robust enough to carry
the considerable weight of the water tank at about
1 000t with all the rebar involved. It’s daunting.” That
was constructed by Lutalo Construction Projects, as was
the pumphouse.
“Once the installation is done, we will be presenting
water saving options to Gallagher, hoping to ensure the
mixers come with water-saving aerators and the toilets
have half-flush – once the water reservoir is up and
running.”
Scheduling woes
Goldmark has both a maintenance (commercial,
residential and industrial) and construction divisions,
and has been in existence over 15 years. “We do
everything from a leaking tap washer in a house, up
to urban upgrade of a 144-unit apartment block.” The
combination of maintenance and construction assists in
scheduling and flexibility in moving teams between small
and large jobs.
The tank, water vessel and pump were all supplied
by the client rather than Goldmark. The plumbing
works was anticipated to be complete by November.
The project has taken a year, but Solomon explains
there were substantial periods of inaction in between,
as primarily the tank was prefabricated. One of the
challenges was consequently to manage a fitful
workflow with other projects.
“Each sub-contractor gets called in by the project
manager according to its schedule. For instance, the
schedule provided that the water tank was to be full for
the Comic Con. We fell behind schedule when we had
to drill under the road to avoid damaging utility services
– such as stormwater and fibre, Eskom and Telkom
cables – which introduced a complication. The client did
January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11
While still a work in progress, this is the tank adjacent to the pumphouse.
“In 22 years of being in the
business it’s the first time
we’re doing a water storage
system of this scale.”
radar mapping to determine what was below the road, and
contractors had to drill 2.4m below the road surface to
miss all the services.
“The delay is the reason we had to do a temporary
connection to at least survive Comic Con. That was done,
and the coming months will be focused on setting the
system up on a permanent basis,” says Solomon. PA
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