The Fairmont Olympic Hotel, Seattle, WA

Five Diamond ePIPE Project

Featuring a collection of fabled castles, secluded lodges and modern retreats, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts proudly operates 51 distinctive hotels – some of the world’s most celebrated addresses in 12 countries. As the only AAA Five Diamond hotel in the Pacific Northwest, and crowned “Fairmont Hotel of the Year for 2006,” The Fairmont Olympic Hotel is Seattle’s premier luxury hotel and certainly qualifies as one of the finest hotels anywhere.

The Problem

At The Fairmont Olympic, everything is secondary to exceptional levels of guest service and satisfaction, so when faced with the disruptive problem of recurrent copper pinholes in their domestic hot water supply, hotel operations and management agreed that a problem so serious required the best possible solution. Director of Engineering, David Gault was charged with the initial responsibility of finding a solution to the problem. Mr. Gault went to great lengths to understand the problem including the extraction of samples which were sent for metallurgical examination by a corrosion engineer. “We were trying to understand the nature of the problem, but the only certainty seemed to be that the problem was getting worse.” Fortunately, Mr. Gault was familiar with past ePIPE projects completed by ACE DuraFlo at neighboring Seattle hotels in previous years. “Based on our evaluation, ACE EnviroTech was the only company with the certifications, solid references and past hotel experience to give Fairmont the confidence to move forward with the ePIPE project.” Once the decision was made to go with ePIPE , the challenge became how to complete the work with a minimum of impact on guest services, on a very tight time-line, and without a significant effect on revenue.