service and repair

With an enrollment of more than 27,000 students, the University of New Mexico is the state’s largest college. It’s known for its strong and historied athletic programs, particularly the Lobos football and basketball teams, which compete in the Mountain West Conference. Dreamstyle Stadium has been home to the Lobos football team for 60 seasons.  The Read more

With an enrollment of more than 27,000 students, the University of New Mexico is the state’s largest college. It’s known for its strong and historied athletic programs, particularly the Lobos football and basketball teams, which compete in the Mountain West Conference.

Dreamstyle Stadium has been home to the Lobos football team for 60 seasons.  The 39,224 seat football stadium is attached to the L.F. Tow Diehm Athletic Facility. Tow Diehm, who’s known as the “Father of Athletic Training” in New Mexico, served as UNM’s athletics trainer for 31 years.

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Inside, the facility includes athletic offices, common areas, locker rooms for both home and visiting teams, and a weight room that underwent an $800,000 renovation in 2014.

A more recent renovation took place in the facility’s primary mechanical room.  Over the past few years, the domestic hot water system began failing. Nonstop pump failures, electrical problems, and a leaking hot water storage tank plagued maintenance crews.

Navien NPE-240S tankless water heater, Navien, tankless water heaters, plumbing, water heating, service and repair, retrofitThese problems inevitably surfaced at the worst times, like game day. The system provides hot water to all fixtures within the building, including the home and visitor locker room showers.

“We were frequently called in after hours to tend to the old system,” explained Richard Van Damme, HVAC master for the University of New Mexico. “At one point, we had even drained the 1,600 gallon storage tank for replacement, only to fill it again a few days later for game.”

Hot water was being supplied by two large, atmospheric volume water heaters with capacities of 490,000 BTUH each. The maintenance department had been pushing for replacement for a number of years.  The cost of maintenance was rising, outright failure was imminent, the system’s dependability was lacking and efficiency was a concern.

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“When we received a work order to replace the failing system, we evaluated a straight, in-kind replacement with standard efficiency water heaters. Installing a similar storage tank would’ve required removing part of the roof. We also looked at tankless style system options. Energy savings was a big consideration, as was redundancy and serviceability,” said Jesse Hart, facilities engineer for UNM’s facilities management department.”

“There are short periods of high demand, with low or no demand otherwise,” he continued. “The showers aren’t even used year-round, so the application lent itself perfectly to a hi-efficiency, low-volume hot water system. Standby heat loss from the big tank was significant.”

UNM looked at various tankless products and contacted their local Navien representative, Jordan Mahboub, at RepNet. Mahboub and Hart worked closely with Navien sales engineers to create a design based on the peak hot water demand at the L.F. Tow Diehm Athletic Facility: 82 gallons per minute at 120F. The university wanted the ability to meet peak demand with one or two units offline.

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Once the design was approved, Futures Mechanical was hired for the replacement. The volume water heaters and storage tank were removed and 18 Navien NPE-240S condensing, tankless water heaters were installed.

The NPE-240S is a 199,900 BTUH condensing, wall-hung water heater that features dual stainless steel heat exchangers, a 10-to-1 turndown ratio, and efficiencies up to 97 percent. The unit also provides LEED points, where applicable.

Water heaters were installed in two independent systems, one on either side of the mechanical room to serve each locker room. Navien’s Ready-Link manifold system was used to simplify the installation and save space.

The Ready-Link Manifold System provides everything required for a multi-unit installation, including manifolds for water and gas, racks for floor mounting, valves, connections and flex lines.

Up to 16 NPE-240 units can be common vented, so only four roof penetrations were needed at the athletic facility.

“No intricate programming was needed to cascade this many units in a single system,” said Van Damme. “By using the factory-supplied cascade cable, the logic built into the units does all the thinking. If for some reason the master unit goes down, the next unit in line takes over, so there’s no downtime in the event of a unit failure.”

“Having Jordan Mahboub here during commissioning helped us learn all the advantages of the Navien system,” Van Damme continued. For example, each rack requires a single gas regulator, not every unit.  The manifold system lets us isolate any unit in the group for service without taking the others off-line.”

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When the new system was tested, every hot water fixture in the facility was opened for almost two hours. The units cascaded to meet demand, but never fired to 100%. According to Van Damme, full capacity was met and sustained while the systems are operating at 60% input.

“The modulating component was a feature we really wanted,” Hart said. “Each of these units provides a 10-to-1 turndown, so no matter if there’s one sink or 20 showers running, we can accurately match the load. We’re not using energy beyond what’s needed to meet the actual demand. Now that the system has been operational for over a year, we’ve found an annual natural gas savings of 2,282 Therms.”

The entire project took three months over the 2018 summer break. The installation was seamless, and was completed just in time for football season.  There’s now more space to service the water heaters or work on other equipment within the room.

“I think this system is a great asset to the stadium,” Van Damme said. “The money saved on maintenance alone is significant. We’ve been so impressed with these units that we’ve decided to use Navien systems in other locations across campus.”

General contractor Turner Construction uses QuickDrain USA’s ShowerLine linear drain with adaptable pre-sloped PET shower pans to convert old cast iron tubs to modern walk-in showers, reducing installation time and labor costs. The 5-star Four Seasons Houston hotel is only steps away from Minute Maid Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros, making it Read more

General contractor Turner Construction uses QuickDrain USA’s ShowerLine linear drain with adaptable pre-sloped PET shower pans to convert old cast iron tubs to modern walk-in showers, reducing installation time and labor costs.

The 5-star Four Seasons Houston hotel is only steps away from Minute Maid Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros, making it a favorite of out-of-town fans who come to see their favorite team in action. Opened in 1982, the Four Seasons Houston is now in the latter stages of upgrading 404 guest bathrooms to transform the iconic downtown hotel, as part of a multi-year renovation project.

QuickDrain USA's tub-to-shower conversion kits, drains, shower drains, plumbing, service and repair, QuickDrain USA, contractor, Turner ConstructionThe bathroom renovations involve converting 40-year-old cast iron tubs to modern showers. According to project assistant-superintendent, John Upshaw of Turner Construction, converting 404 bathtubs to step-in showers in a building constructed in the ’80s, is no small feat.

The construction team has encountered numerous job-site irregularities, with some bathrooms having more than one layer of drywall in the shower enclosure, altering the dimensions of the enclosure. Meanwhile, other bathrooms were missing cement boards, resulting in damage behind the walls.

“When we demo out a tub, we’re essentially running into different conditions in 404 different bathrooms,” Upshaw explains. “You just don’t know what you’re going to run into.”

So the team had to find a solution that would allow them to adapt to unexpected plumbing rough-in configurations and various shower-enclosure sizes. A product that would speed installation would be the ultimate find for a large project like this one.

QuickDrain USA's tub-to-shower conversion kits, drains, shower drains, plumbing, service and repair, QuickDrain USA, contractor, Turner ConstructionWhich is exactly what the hotel’s architecture and design firm expected to accomplish when they specified QuickDrain USA’s tub-to-shower conversion kits for the project.

QuickDrain’s tub-to-shower conversion kits include an integrated PVC drain body, combined with a pre-sloped PET shower pan and waterproofing sheet membrane.

ShowerLine, used for the Four Seasons Houston project, is a high-quality PVC linear drain system and features a fully sloped trough where water exits through either a vertical or a side waste outlet.  Installers can select from among six decorative drain-cover designs to accent the overall design scheme of any bathroom. In this case, the drain cover “Lines” was deemed the best fit.

Plumber Larry Adams, from Kilgore Industries in Houston, says he highly recommends the QuickDrain linear drain system because it’s easy to install and provides flexibility for the drain installation. Adams was the foreman apprentice during the original construction of the building in the 1980s.

QuickDrain USA's tub-to-shower conversion kits, drains, shower drains, plumbing, service and repair, QuickDrain USA, contractor, Turner ConstructionCore drilling impossible: “These are old cast iron tubs, so the drains were set at different positions and often off-center,” explains Adams. But jack-hammering or core-drilling through the concrete to adjust drain positioning wasn’t an option. Since the hotel is constructed via post-tensioned slabs, core-drilling would compromise the building’s integrity.

To allow enough room for Adams to stub out the existing DWV (drain, waste and vent) lines, which are made of copper, Turner Construction had to chip out the concrete surrounding the existing pipe. “We had a scanning company come out to determine where the rebar was in the slab,” explains Turner’s Upshaw. “Fortunately, we were able to find a location between the rebar to chip a small area around the drain.”

In addition, there was no way to solder the existing copper pipe to a new copper joint because of jagged pieces of metal coming through the concrete and less than half a hand space. Adams had to use a mechanical fastening coupling between the copper and the transition material. Thanks to the PET shower pans’ flexibility, the construction crew was able to cut the drain support panel in half to allow Adams to make the mechanical connection.

 

QuickDrain USA's tub-to-shower conversion kits, drains, shower drains, plumbing, service and repair, QuickDrain USA, contractor, Turner Construction

Made of extruded rigid PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic foam, QuickDrain’s pre-sloped shower panels can be easily cut and pieced together without costly customization, eliminating the time and labor to float the typical pitched concrete shower base.

“The flexibility of the PET pan is a big advantage,” says Upshaw, “especially given the irregularities we run into after removing the tubs.”

Furthermore, the QuickDrain system eliminates the need to knock down and reframe walls. According to Upshaw, the fact that they can cut the PET pans on-site to adjust to practically any condition, saves much needed time and labor costs for a renovation project of this magnitude.

Model-room training critical: QuickDrain conducted on-site, model-room training before the start of the project, performing a full installation to support Turner and Kilgore, as well as tile subcontractor Gulf Coast Flooring, also based in Houston. The training was essential because it provided the tile-setting crew with a solid grasp of how the QuickDrain system works.

“Gulf Coast Flooring is installing the PET pans and tile in all of the bathrooms,” says Upshaw, “so they had to fully understand the process.”

Upshaw believes Kilgore benefited the most from the training because they were able to determine which tools they would need to perform the job. “We were able to knock out any kinks and learn our lessons on what we can do better,” he says. “After that training, Kilgore hit the ground running.”

Tile contractor Jaime Rosa, of Gulf Coast Flooring, says each crew member completes an average five showers per day at the Four Seasons Houston project. “It takes less time than a conventional mud bed, and that translates into cost-savings for us and the hotel.”

Turner’s Upshaw adds: “The finished installation looks great, and as long as it looks good, the hotel is happy.”

Upshaw says he likes the QuickDrain system. “I’ve actually been thinking of putting it in my own home, and we will use it again for similar commercial projects.”