New heating system for Gates Vascular Insitute with Megapress
The Gates Vascular Institute, adjacent to the General Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, USA, is a combination of the finest researchers, surgeons, physicians, and other clinicians devoted to the study, treatment and prevention of cardiac, stroke, and vascular diseases. “At this facility they needed a new heating system and chilled water system at the facility for which we selected Viega Megapress (US standard),” said Scott Metro, General Foreman at John W. Danforth Company which handled the piping for the project.
Time and labour savings as well as cleanliness
As significant as the time and labour savings are for pressing instead of threading the thick-walled steel pipes, Metro considers cleanliness to be the number one benefit of the Megapress system.
Rich Mueller, Danforth’s Project Manager, explains: “You can’t be clean enough when working in a hospital. Pressing eliminates the oil mess because there’s no need to thread the pipe.” Safety and ease of use were two more reasons Danforth cited for using Megapress.
“The pipe was located 16 feet above the floor, and the heat exchangers were down below,” Metro said. “When you’re up that high with 24" pipe wrenches, you tend to work a bit slower. Some fitters aren’t physically built to pull on those big wrenches. With pressing, it doesn’t matter how strong you are. You just pull the trigger on the pressing tool and the connection is done.”