Four Seasons Hotel – Vancouver, British Columbia

Consistently rated the world’s premier luxury hospitality company, the

Four Season Hotel and Resorts have distinguished themselves by

providing the best-personalized service to their guests in some of the

world’s most exclusive lodgings.

The Problem:

The soft water supply in the area’s water system leads to an early replacement of copper piping systems, which corrode quickly in this environment, often within seven to ten years. The 28-floor luxury Hotel, located in the downtown core was suffering with the ongoing effects of pipe corrosion resulting in pinhole leaks in its water lines. Engineering staff at the hotel was convinced that the ePIPE® restoration process was the answer and a project schedule and project cost was worked out with ACE DuraFlo.

The Solution:

The ePIPE® process began by identifying blocks of rooms associated with a common riser to be isolated and taken off line. Owing to the design of the plumbing system, 10 floors of rooms, 2 rooms per floor were isolated at a time. Water line sizes ranged from ½” to 2” and was all copper.

Once the predetermined riser(s) and branch lines were identified and isolated, water was shut off, the system was drained and all angle stops were removed. The remaining steps in the ePIPE process involved drying the piping system, cleaning the interior of the piping system and then coating the interior of the piping system with a specially engineered NSF Standard 61 approved epoxy. The cleaning process is a purely mechanical process. A closed loop system collects all abrading material and residual material without releasing any of the material or dust into the environment.

The specialized NSF approved and UPC listed epoxy coating material was applied to the interior of the pipes. Once the epoxy was applied the system was left open overnight. The next morning all taps were reconnected and water was restored to the riser/system. Water/Pressure testing was completed and the system was restored to full operation.

The direct cost savings of completing the restoration/repairs to the piping system using the ePIPE® method of pipe restoration over a conventional repipe was estimated at a 60% direct savings. Further nonestimated cost savings can be accounted for in no loss of room revenue and no indirect or consequential repairs that are typically associated with a repiping job.

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