Today, “eco-friendly” is more than a trend. It is a concept adopted by numerous productions, industries, and businesses. Green is the new ethics many companies choose to follow whatever their final products are. The plumbing industry is no exception. In this article, you will learn about seven cases of how eco-friendly plumbing products helped to save the environment while perfectly performing their core functions.
During a CCTV pipe inspection, it was found that tree roots had encroached almost 1,000 ft of a wastewater system, badly damaging the pipeline. The wastewater system itself runs beneath a dense forest with a delicate ecosystem. It was decided that repairing the damaged drain pipeline was not the only task – it was also necessary to preserve the natural environment above it. The latter was not easy for the specific landscape – the abundance of trees and steep inclines that limited access to the damaged part of the pipeline.
Trelleborg Pipe Seals was the company to take care of the issue. Upon reviewing the issue, the company’s expert suggested DrainFlexLine and POX HC210+ resin for hot water curing. It took three hours for the crew to prepare the liner, take it down the hill using carts and then invert it into the sewer holes. To accomplish the whole project, especially built water towers helped make use of steep inclines to efficiently drive the resin down the pipeline.
After the liner curing procedure, the crew ran a leak test with a CCTV examination. As a result, the pipeline was 100% waterproof and fully functional. The resin used in the process is VOCs- and styrene-free and is harmless to the environment. No trees were damaged during the drain cleaning.
The next case will take us to Las Vegas, where a four-hundred-unit apartment complex was dealing with frequent drain pump clogging. Basically, it happened almost every week. Such objects as wipes, toothbrushes, toys, and even clothes got flushed into the sewer system and then clogged. Of course, such frequent incidents could eventually lead to a total sewer system’s collapse, jeopardizing the comfort and safety of hundreds of people.
Regular sewer line cleaning was not only time-consuming and complex – but it also meant burdening expenses. For instance, replacing a broken-down pump – which was one of the most frequent solutions – cost $3,5k. So, figuratively speaking, a lot of money really went down the drain on a regular basis. Something had to be done to change the situation.
The solution came in the form of 3-HYDRO – a wastewater grinder from JWC Environmental company. This is a powerful grinder equipped with two steel cutters. Due to low rotation speed and high torque, these two cutters are able to grind solid objects into small pieces so that the resulting debris could easily flow through pipes without clogging or damaging the drain system.
The JWC Environmental company delivered the 3-HYDRO grinder pre-assembled for the installation. It only took one day for the plumbing crew to install the grinder.
Ever since the 3-HYDRO wastewater grinder was installed and put to use, no plump clogging occurred. As a result, in three months, 3-HYDRO allowed saving almost $20k – the amount of money previously spent on damaged plumps repair or replacement.
Meet Eric Silva, owner of a Michigan-based Silva Mechanical company. One of Mr. Silva’s main occupations is tankless water heater installation. As a professional, Eric Silva always seeks ways to increase his productivity by doing more in a lesser amount of time. The same goes for the tankless heater installation. The process involves altering water or gas piping, dealing with the venting, and more. It’s no surprise that operators need to eliminate as much downtime as it is possible.
For Mr. Silva’s case, the solution in increasing installation productivity came from the Viega company and its ProPress and MegaPressG products. These products let Eric Silva deal with hot water restoring a lot faster than he ever could. As Mr. Silva says, with Viega products, he can react to the most urgent requests in no time. If he gets a call at night from a desperate client whose water heater suddenly stopped working, Mr. Silva knows that using Viega’s ProPress and MegaPressG gear, he is able to restore hot water in the shortest amount of time.
New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a religious landmark and a magnificent architectural masterpiece that draws millions of visitors each year. Some of them come for religious reasons. Some are fascinated by the beauty of this cultural gem.
Back in the day, the 76k-sq-ft cathedral was heated by the steam-radiator system. But in 2017, it was decided that St. Patrick’s Cathedral should go green with a geothermal heating system – the system that would not only be compact and more efficient but would also be eco-friendly, producing the lesser amount of carbon in the ecosystem.
The concept became possible thanks to the Triangle Tube Prestige 399 Cascade system. The system is easily installed and highly adaptive, which makes it a perfect choice for most locations. Although it is a compact unit, it is still able to produce an impressively high amount of Btus. Another key feature of this eco-friendly unit is that it allows saving space due to the combined vent system. The set of Triangle Tube’s lower-capacity water boilers makes for a substantial reduction of off-cycle water losses and wasted heat compared to single-boiler systems with large capacity.
As a result, the elaborate heating system has proved its eco-friendly potential by dramatically reducing the carbon footprint.
Blue Oak Ranch is a biological field station and eco-reserve. The Ranch is owned and operated by the University of California. When a facility renovation was proposed – with new construction plans and extensive infrastructure upgrading – it was clear that such a project would require substantial plumbing works. The expanded wastewater system meant to serve the future facilities had to meet eco-friendly requirements by ensuring the protection of the local environment and recharge the aquifer.
Eventually, a system for wastewater recharging was designed by Biosphere consulting and installed by Battle Mountain Excavation company. The system is 100% environment-friendly due to the Quick4 Plus high-capacity infiltrator chambers in a total number of 231 units. All the chambers were placed with careful precision and in accordance with the project’s eco-awareness.
The system operates by channeling wastewater into two separate drain fields. The first drain field accepts wastewater from faculty residences and student cabins. This drain field combines gravity flow with trench pumping. The second functions as a traditional gravity flow unit. Both systems make use of septic chambers as a primary method. Then soils provide final filtration of the effluent before it goes back to the aquifer.
As a result, the new wastewater system with high-capacity septic chambers allowed reducing the carbon footprint as was planned for the project. Other goals achieved by the decentralized wastewater system include completing the water cycle and recharging the aquifer. With the aforementioned points, such a system represents high standards of water conservation, wastewater processing, and pro-environment energy sustainability.
When a Built to Last Design&Build’s owner, Ben Bogie got a contract on remodeling an almost 1,5k-sq-ft house for an aging client, and the contractor knew from the start that it was going to involve a lot of reconstruction. Among the numerous task within the contract’s plan was finding a perfect energy-efficient option for the home’s water heating. The existing 60-gallon tank water heater had to go, but what could it be replaced with? Ben Bogie did not feel like just swapping the existing tank water heater with the newer one. It just did not make any sense in terms of upgrading and energy-efficiency.
The idea that Mr. Bogie came up with was to install a tankless water heater. The choice was Nortiz America’s EZTR75. This tankless model turned out to be the perfect replacement alternative to the tank 60-gallon heater.
EZTR75 comes as a full-blown installation set including the following elements:
As far as installation goes, it’s quite simple, especially for a plumbing specialist. Normally, it would take 2-3 hours to install the whole unit. As a result, the client got an up-to-date tankless water heating system which, thanks to its energy-efficiency, made for substantial energy savings.
The final case takes us to Montreal, where a sewer rehab plan was complicated by a couple of nuances a contractor had to follow. The first one being the municipal sidewalk that must not be damaged during the drain rehab service. And the second nuance was an almost century-old tree that a client wished to preserve.
Using the Drain Rehab Solutions’ CIPP System for pipe rehab, the contractor managed to get the job done without damaging the tree and municipal property. Without having to remove the tree, which would have required getting it excavated, the overall cost of the contract was up to 40 percent lower than it could have been. Eventually, the job was done by just two technicians who relined the drain pipeline effectively and cleanly.
As for the Drain Rehab Solutions’ products, such as the aforementioned CIPP Pipe Rehab System or DRS Pipe Patch Repair Kit – both were used during the said job – they are 100% eco-friendly having no VOCs or toxic smells, and make for the overall 80% carbon footprint reduction.
I bring over 9 years of dedicated plumbing experience to the table. As a seasoned professional in the plumbing industry, I've tackled a wide range of projects, from residential repairs to large-scale commercial installations.