Picture this: an idyllic farm in beautiful California full of … oil tanks?
Well, maybe the oil tanks aren’t the picturesque animals and rolling green hills you were imagining – but the thousands of feet of stainless tubing and press fittings used on the project just might be.
At an oil-tank farm for an oil-distribution company in Long Beach, California, a crew from Orange Coast Petroleum Equipment put Viega ProPress Stainless to work for 16 tanks that needed to be plumbed. And it makes for a beautiful sight.
More than 3,000 feet of 2” 304 stainless tubing on the project is connected with hundreds of 2” Viega ProPress Stainless 304 FKM fittings.
The oil-tank farm was recently purchased by another company, which wanted to remove all the old galvanized plumbing. That’s when Orange Coast Petroleum Equipment and Viega came in.
“We use stainless steel for pretty much every setup we do now, whether oil or fuel tank,” said Abel Dominguez, service technician with Orange Coast Petroleum Equipment. “It’s compatible for fuel and gas, and just the amount of time we save with it is great. The fact that the stainless looks so nice, it really helps with people wanting to have it on their tanks.”
Dominguez said they started using Viega about eight years ago after taking over a project that included 2” ProPress Copper fittings. He had used Viega fittings in some residential plumbing prior to that, so Dominguez had experience with press fittings, which made it an easy transition.
“In the residential setting, it was easy to cut into the plumbing – even with running water. So when we took over that project that was running the copper Viega fittings, we started using Viega. It just went from there,” he said. “We saw how easy it was and how much time we saved. We used to carry a threader in the back of the truck, so between that and dealing with heavy 2” pipe, Viega saves us a lot of time and energy!”
At the oil-tank farm location, Dominguez explained that there was so much tubing needed because each tank has only one entry point, equipped with a valve, for both filling and distilling. This means there are twice as many plumbed lines as there are tanks.
Dominguez, his project foreman and a couple of other crew members replaced all the lines in about six weeks, thanks to Viega fittings.
“Pressing this project versus cutting and threading … we would have been there double the time,” Dominguez said. “It really saved us a ton of time and work.”
