FARMINGTON – Heavy rains and unexpected difficulties set the project to replace a drain pipe downtown’s Broadway back about a week, officials said Thursday, but the project is now nearly halfway done.

“By the (movie) theater and up Front Street – those were our deepest sections,” said Kevin Vining, owner of E.L. Vining & Son, the excavation company working on the project. “It took about two weeks.”

On Thursday, work continued on Lower Broadway, where last summer a large sinkhole opened in the street after a few days of exceptionally heavy rain. An investigation showed the 30-inch aluminum drain pipe had corroded to the point holes were letting rainwater out into the ground around it.

To replace the pipe workers have to dig a trench about 8 feet deep, pull the decaying aluminum pipe out, and then install the new heavy-duty plastic one, which has a lifetime guarantee, said Mitch Boulette, Farmington’s public works director.

All the time they are in the trench, the workers are protected not only by hard hats, but by a heavy metal box that keeps them safe from the earth that sometimes gives way on either side of them.

But even with the protection, they can’t work in the rain, Vining said. Water still rushes down the corroded pipe. It also took a long time to get past Front Street, Vining said, because so many utility lines and sewer pipes cross the drainpipe’s path, and each had to be carefully worked around, or hooked into the new pipe, before they could move on. Work should move more quickly now, Vining said.

The lost week shouldn’t cost the town any more, at least in construction costs, Town Manager Richard Davis said.

The town has spent about $200,000 of the $250,000 budgeted for the repair, Davis said. The contract with Vining is for $147,000, he said.

He said he doesn’t see the project going over budget.

“We can cut it off at the point where we’re very close,” Davis said. “The only thing left would be doing the final paving and striping, and those could be delayed. If it looks like the cost is going to exceed what’s been appropriated, we won’t do those items.”

The construction and the roadblocks that have been up since July have had an affect on town businesses, though many declined to comment Thursday.

“I guess people wished it would be done sooner,” Ron Passarello, of Java Joe’s, said Thursday. The coffee shop hasn’t been affected by the work, but Passerllo said he had heard of other businesses that were impacted.

Everyone’s trying to work as fast as possible, said Vining, Boulette and Davis. Hopefully, the work will be done before the busy holiday shopping season, Davis said.