If you’ve ever been to a sporting event, you know what happens whenever there is a break in the action. The fans leave their seats and hit the concession stands and the restrooms.
Considering the new Vikings stadium can accommodate 68,500 fans, and that means a lot of concession stands and a lot of restrooms.
For the plumbing contractor, that boils down to thousands of floor drains and thousands of toilets that need to be installed. As with any job of this size, you’re always looking for ways to save time and cut costs while still doing quality work.
The concession stands originally called for floor sinks that would go under soda machines, beer taps, and coffee makers in the kiosks throughout the stadium. The specification required each drain to be porcelain-coated to help prevent bacteria from growing.
Given the number of floor sinks specified, we saw an opportunity to save the contractor some time and money. Instead of using floor sinks, we were able to custom design a floor drain that we could enamel coat in our Alabama manufacturing facility. This custom drain had a much smaller footprint than the floor sinks, was faster to install, and the cost of each drain was less expensive than what was originally proposed.
Fascinating fact: The largest crane in the world brought in from Dubai is being used to build the stadium. One of the many jobs for that crane is lifting a bank of eight prefabbed water closet carriers mounted on angle iron from flatbed trucks and placing them on the job site.
Contractors love the ease of installation and time savings Smith’s Quarterback® Water Closet Supports provide. For the Vikings Stadium job, the contractor is prefabbing the carriers in their shop and then shipping them to the job site.
It’s important to be able to mount and test the drain and water pipes before they get onsite. On projects this size, crews have to take turns using the construction elevator. One missing bolt at the wrong time can hold the job up for hours while waiting for your turn to get on those elevators to retrieve the missing part. By prefabbing everything beforehand in a controlled environment, once you’re on the job you only have to make one connection to the water pipe and one connection to the drainpipe.
So far things are going smoothly. You can also access a PDF of some interesting facts about the new stadium here.
Want to see some cool construction photos? Follow this link to Minnesota Public Radio.