The new $1.3 billion Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, is the first NFL stadium to receive LEED Gold certification, with green features everywhere from its 27,000 square-foot green roof to its farm-to-table concessions offerings. One particularly crucial green feature is its use of recycled water for the flushing and irrigation systems.
March 23, 2015 - Plumbing & Restrooms
The new $1.3 billion Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, is the first NFL stadium to receive LEED Gold certification, with green features everywhere from its 27,000 square-foot green roof to its farm-to-table concessions offerings. One particularly crucial green feature is its use of recycled water for the flushing and irrigation systems.
Up to 85 percent of all water use in the 68,500-seat stadium will be from recycled water used for toilet flushing and playing field and green roof irrigation. The recycled-water pressure booster system built using Xylem’s Bell & Gossett brand products taps into the Santa Clara Valley Water District water recycling system. This eliminates the need to use freshwater to flush toilets and to irrigate the natural grass field, green roof, and other areas, which is of particular concern in drought-ridden California.
A test of the system, the "Super Flush," was conducted in April 2014 to make sure the system was fully operational before the stadium opened. During the test, hundreds of workers and volunteers simultaneously flushed every toilet and urinal and turned on every sink in the stadium for about 30 minutes. The system passed the test.
There are twice as many toilets in Levi’s Stadium as there were in Candlestick Park, the 49ers’ former stadium, and the expectation is for significant water savings due to more efficient infrastructure. According to stadium water assessment estimates, 84 percent of all of the water used will be recycled water, which amounts to more than 42 million gallons a year.
Products that went into the stadium included Bell & Gossett centrifugal pumps and Goulds Water Technology e-SV multistage centrifugal pumps for the recycled-water pressure booster system, Rolairtrol air separators, Series 60 inline pumps, 1510 end suction base mounted pumps, and VSX double suction pumps for the hydronic systems. The company’s Bell & Gossett brazed plate and GPX gasketed plate and frame heat exchangers were specified and supplied for the condenser water system since the majority of the air-conditioning equipment and food service coolers are water-cooled.
