With a need for increased capacity at the Loveland (Colorado) Wastewater Treatment Facility, Garney Construction utilized Viega’s ProPress Stainless 316 line in a new digester complex and for some retrofit work.
The $35 million capital-improvement project for the city helped to nearly double the capacity of the two digester tanks already in the system. In large wastewater treatment plants, such as in Loveland, anaerobic digestion is often used to break down organic waste. The process produces digester gas from the decomposition of sewage sludge.
An EnviroMix large bubble system, a bio nutrient removal system, was installed and needed to be retrofit to the existing six aeration basins at the plant. Viega 2” ProPress Stainless fittings were used.
“We attached pipe to the compressors, and it was all Viega fittings from the compressors to the source,” said John Hirsch, project engineer with Garney. “The basins were existing – just retrofit work on our end.”
When working in a facility such as a wastewater treatment plant, time is of the essence.
“This is where we really saw the benefits of Viega,” said Hirsch. “Wastewater never stops. The flow keeps coming in, so shutdowns don’t work well. We’d have to do some short shutdowns and press onto the existing copper lines, but there’s a huge benefit here to pressing instead of sweating, like you would typically do.”
The large bubble system came as a vendor package supplied by EnviroMix. It included compressors, valve panels, tubing, fittings, nozzles, etc., along with the specified 2” ProPress Stainless fittings for connection. With some training from Viega reps, everyone on the project got up to speed with Viega fittings, whether they’d used them before or not, to get the project rolling.
“It was at least three times faster to press instead of sweat” said Josh Ivaska, mechanical foreman on the job. “Just cut and go. I love it. It’s time efficient.”
Hirsch estimated that there’s approximately 1,000 linear feet of piping that used Viega fittings, and he applauded the ease of ProPress Stainless.
“The simplicity of the whole system, and the versatility that helps us out when we have time crunches like this, is great,” he said. “It also looks good. You get a clean system, and the aesthetics are good, without glue dripping down the pipe or anything like that.”
