Handling, Transportation and Storage and of Ductile Iron Pipe

Ductile Iron pipes are heavy objects and care should taken to ensure the quality of pipes during handling. When fork lift are used for unloading the pipes, ensure that the fork blade donot damage the pipe and its lining and coatings.

1.1 Precautions
The crane or forklift is available for lifting, where special hooks shall be applied, as shown in Figure 1. The special hooks should be padded steel hook, nylon strap or steel wire rope covered by rubber, so as to not damage the internal cement lining and external finishing layer..

1.3.1 For bundled ductile iron pipes, strap and purpose designed lifting tools shall be used to lift them from the bottom of whole bundle. No circumstance should the pipes or the straps lifted directly by hook so as to avoid packing distortion, breakage of package straps or bundle-off during lifting.
1.3.2 For ductile iron pipes packed in bulk, purpose designed hook or lifting strap should be used to lifting one or multiple each time, as shown in Figure 2;

3.1 When forklift is applied, its parts contacting the pipes should be protected during handling, particular the fork blade.

(1) In case of truck or railway transportation. the carriage or wagon must be cleaned free of foreign matters. meanwhile, the loading scheme shall be prepared according to the capacity of vehicle;
(2) In case of truck and railway transportation, timber beds shall be placed on the floor to avoid the direct contact between the socket end and floor. The pipes could be loaded on the vehicle in bundles, pyramid or straight sided formation.
The pyramid loading shall be built by resting the pipe between pairs of pipes in the preceding layer with the socket in successive layers reversed. straight sided loading shall only be used where vehicles have purpose designed supports along the sides of the platform, where special cradles separating the layers are used to ensure no metal-to-metal contact occurs between rows of pipes.
(3) While unloading from the vehicle, it is necessary to avoid directly pulling or dropping the pipe , wrapped or not, on the ground, even on the sand ground.

3.1 Requirements for Stacking Site
3.1.1 The storage are shall be level and strong, Avoid
- Marsh land;
- Unstable ground;
- Corrosive soil;
3.1.2 On arrival at the storage site, the pipes should be inspected and if there are any damage, internal or external coating and jointing surface should be repaired, preferably before stacking.
3.1.3 Two tracks of timber shall be placed under the pipes to avoid their direct contact with the ground, and the selected timber shall be strong..
3.1.4 For the long-period storage, the pipes shall be covered with canvas or woven cloth, so as to protect the pipes against dust or dirt.
3.2 Stacking Arrangement
3.2.1 There are mainly 2 types of stacking arrangements for ductile iron pipes: Square Stacking and Pyramid Stacking.

3.2.2 Square Stacking:shown as Figure 3.
Each tier of pipe shall be positioned with their axes at right angle to those of the preceding tier to form a stable and compact stack. The pipes rest directly upon those beneath and extra care should be exercised when lowering the pipes
into position to prevent damage to the protective coating, sleeving and wrapping.

Taking into account the bearing capacity of the underlying pipes, the stacking height for K9 ductile iron pipe is recommended as shown in Table 1, and the preferred height for C-Class ductile iron pipes is shown in Table 2.