The construction of the new Southeast High School in Wichita, KS, was the fastest a school has been built − a mere 16-months after breaking ground. One of the largest schools in Wichita, Southeast High School will accommodate 1,800 students and feature a 900-seat auditorium and fine arts suite, a gymnasium with a walking track, swimming pool, storm shelters and much more.

It was the tight construction schedule that led Brad Ward, Vice President of Midwest Engineering, to specify Viega products for the school.

“For the Southeast high job, the selling point to using Viega products was the construction schedule,” Ward said. “They have a 16-month build period on a roughly 300,000 square foot building with a lot of piping on the hydronic and plumbing side so their guys can get it in a lot faster.”

It was Ward and his support of Viega products that has led USD 259 to use Viega products universally across the district for repairs and new builds. In the case of Southeast High, Ward specified the use of Viega ProPress® for copper on all the hot

Fit for school

and cold domestic water lines 2" and smaller and Viega MegaPress®G on heating and air 2" and down. Kruse Corporation, who worked closely with the general contractor, Dondlinger Construction, performed all the mechanical work.

“The reason we like it so much is that it saves labor,” said Rusty Williams, the Plumbing Foreman for Kruse. “When you’re doing connections on live systems then you don’t have to worry about putting bread in or drain the system down to solder. You can just cut it, put your no-stop couplings on and slide them in place, press them and you’re done. It makes it a lot easier.”

CUSTOMER: Wichita USD 259

APPLICATION: Potable water and natural gas

LOCATION: Wichita, KS

CONTRACTOR: Kruse Corporation

We press everything now. Our personal belief is you save money by pressing.”“

Kent Kruse, owner of Kruse Corporation, said it makes his job easier when he’s able to facilitate help for his employees and save money on labor as well. On Southeast High, Kent estimates he saved about 20% on labor by using Viega products.

“It’s not rocket science – a job like this most all of our costs are labor, so anything we can do to save labor will save us all time and money,” Kruse said. “And hopefully, with the savings, we can go out and get another job.”

Kruse has about 200 employees, with approximately 40 employees on the Southeast job site, 24 of those being plumbers. To date, the Southeast High job is the largest in company history, having diversified into plumbing six years ago after being solely a HVAC contractor. Kruse and Williams agreed that the innovation behind of Viega’s press system and its quality has contributed to the labor savings.

“When you go to flush a system and if you’ve soldered, you have all kinds of debris in the line and we’ll have strainers on them filled with solder and flux. Well with Viega ProPress you don’t have near the debris so you really save a lot of time and headache,” Williams said.

Williams also commented on the ease of use with Viega MegaPressG.

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“This was our first time using Viega MegaPress and it was a simple installation. Threading pipe can be aggravating, but with Viega MegaPress, it takes those steps and aggravation out of it.”

With the mechanical work scheduled for completion shortly, Kruse said he is grateful for Viega’s Smart Connect® feature, which provides installers added confidence in their ability to ensure the integrity of connections.

“During a remodel on another large-scale industrial building we discovered an older fitting that started leaking because it had never been soldered,” Kruse said.

It’s situations like these which make Kruse and his team grateful for the multiple savings provided by Viega, from the time on the job to the final product.

“We press everything now,” Kruse said. “Our personal belief is you save money by pressing. There’s more savings on the labor than the actual addition of the fitting cost. The labor is a huge pool of money. If you start doing the math, it’s pretty easy math usually.”

For more information on Viega system solutions, visit www.viega.us, or call toll free: 800-976-9819.