BY ROBERT P. MADER
Of CONTRACTOR’s staff
PHILADELPHIA — Next April, the Philadelphia Phillies will open Citizens Bank Park, a new showplace ballpark with real grass, unlike the infamous artificial turf of the old Veterans Stadium. All the mechanicals are being installed by a joint venture of Herman Goldner Co. and certified minority contractor Accord Mechanical.
Bad weather delayed the project, said Goldner President Steve Williams, but now the job is on schedule and the firm is installing pipe, “like General Franks went to Baghdad.”
Much of the contractor’s speed comes from its fabrication shop, said Operations Manager Len DiTullio. Goldner is performing 20% of its man-hours in the shop.
The company employs eight plumbers and 10 pipefitters in the fab shop. The idea is that all the field crews have to do is field welds. All black carbon steel and copper pipe is fabricated. Every piece of no hub is cut to length.
Goldner has a “Vernon cutter” for cutting steel pipe that has two torch heads that cut a bevel on the end of one pipe and on beginning of the next piece. The same machine will cut fish mouths or saddles for welded connections.
“That’s been approved by every engineer because most of them come out to the shop and look at it,” DiTullio said.
Every piece of pipe has at least one fitting already attached to it in the shop. “Nobody is out looking for a fitting so it’s more of an erector set at that point,” he said.
Pipe hangers are cut to length, and the rod, nut and isolator are shipped prepackaged by drilling number.
All the chair carriers and lavs are mounted on angle iron frames and piped so the field crew only has to hook up the drain and vent and water supply lines. Some of the assemblies for Citizens Bank Ballpark have 20 fixtures in a row so the assemblies are in two pieces for shipping purposes.
Goldner’s “preplanning group” coordinates the shop fabrication and shipping. Everyone in the department is a union member with field experience because they all need to know things such as where the best locations for field welds should be.
Every item is boxed, tagged, shrink-wrapped and bar coded for where it should be installed, so that field crews have everything they need. Goldner has been using its preplanning department since 1989 and has a 96% installation rate. The problems are almost always the same, such as a fabrication error or some other contractor has installed something in Goldner’s space.
All that material is put into the hands of Project Manager Bob Gower, who’s charged with installing both plumbing and HVAC systems into the ballpark.
City water comes in through two 8-in. mains merged into a constant pressure Tigerflow Systems Inc. Quadraplex domestic water booster system consisting of three 40-hp pumps and a 15-hp jockey pump.
An 8-in. loop runs around the entire service level that incorporates the mechanical rooms and the locker rooms. Supply piping moves upward from there to the main concourses and suite and club levels.
Heat and domestic hot water comes from three 190-hp Bryan Steam boilers that feed two hot water generators from Cemline that store 3,000 gal. of hot water each.
Concession stands typically have individual Rheem electric water heaters that can be drained down in the off-season.
Gower’s crew is installing 1,900 plumbing fixtures in the park, many of them in gang public toilet rooms on the concourses and the club levels. Fixtures are Eljer, drains and carriers are Zurn and the flushometers are Zurn. Symmons supplied the faucets.
The Bryan boilers feed a 6-in. heating loop that runs around the service level and supplies three variable-speed pumping skids. A fourth skid is a dual-temp skid that supplies dual-temperature fan coil units in the 75 luxury suites. The fan coils are from York International, as is the bulk of the HVAC system.
York supplied the three 500-ton chillers, 42 air handlers and 179 fan coil units. Sixteen of the air handlers have variable frequency drives and the rest are constant volume.
Baltimore Air Coil cooling towers cool condenser water, which passes through a 20-in. Mueller Steam Specialties cast iron duplex basket strainer. Bell & Gossett pumps move condenser water.
The cooling towers can supply free cooling in cold weather through a heat exchanger from Polaris Plate Heat Exchangers.
Sheet metal contractor E.J. Deseta Co. of New Castle, Del., installed all the ductwork. Johnson Controls is the controls contractor.
Goldner is also handling all the drainage and is using PVC sleeves and a fire-stopping system from ProSet Systems. Floor drains are equipped with ProSet TrapGuards that replace trap primers. The TrapGuards, which sit inside floor drains, have a piece of rubber inside that blocks fumes but rolls down to let water drain through.
Goldner is installing 20 duplex 50-hp sewage ejector pumps from ITT Flygt that pump to street level through a network of sewage pipes that average 12-in. in diameter.
The contractor is also installing a large playing field drainage system that feeds into a pumping station 40 ft. below ground. The network of pipes feed into a pumping station with three 135-hp ITT Flygt pumps plus two 25-hp Flygt jockey pumps. Rainwater will be moved into a common line that ties into 36-in. pipe that runs to the sewers.