American Trenchless Comes to the Rescue of Shedd Aquarium

Chicagoland’s Trenchless Sewer Repair Leader Saves the Day for Iconic Shedd Aquarium

When you’re tasked with overseeing one of the most popular tourist attractions in Chicago, you turn to companies that are the best at what they do.

The Shedd Aquarium did just that when they brought in the industry-leading sewer repair team at American Trenchless Technologies.

The Shedd Aquarium is an indoor public aquarium in what’s known as the “Museum Row” in Chicago right along Lake Michigan that opened in 1930! It is the third largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere, after the Georgia Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It welcomes over 2 million visitors each year!

The Aquarium holds over 5 million gallons of water, and houses in excess of 20,000 specimens and over 1,500 different species of fish. It is quite the operation at the Shedd Aquarium, and we knew the task of repairing their failing drain pipes would be a perfect job for our expert team at American Trenchless Technologies.

The Aquarium was experiencing issues with leaks in their pipes that resulted in Calumet City Plumbing recommending us for this difficult task!

Groundwater was coming into the basement and it was a complex task to figure out how to resolve the issue and keep the Shedd operating. The basement houses tons of water in filtration tanks that are used to keep the aquariums functioning.

When the Shedd was built, 30” thick concrete floors were installed to ensure the aquarium would remain sturdy. The amount of concrete used made it impossible to access the hundreds of feet of pipes that needed attention. A drain tile system was built around the building to keep water out of the basement area, however groundwater from Lake Michigan seeped into the now 50 year old cast iron sewer pipes. Special engineering crews came in to determine the best location to dig access points through over 3 ft of concrete to give us access to the pipe so that we could fix their problem.

We were able to work there in the evening hours when operations were closed. We installed hundreds of feet of lining materials in a short amount of time. We did this by using our new UV curing methods which cures sewer lining materials in a fraction of the time the old conventional way takes. All the while the main attractions, the fish and animals, were able to remain in their homes, and there was no disruption to the traffic flow of the Aquarium.

We were able to save the Shedd Aquarium tens of thousands of dollars and help them avoid the cost of shutting operations down for multiple days.

A job well done, and even better that no animals or patrons were disrupted in the process! Business continued as usual as we finished the necessary repairs needed to be done to keep operations running smoothly.