Viega? Pressfit? Are they worth considering? 2

[TheCairn]

I am looking at the next outage of our pulp mill and wanted to consider some options to threaded 316 schd 40 and welded 316 schd 40 for our white water piping (mildly acidic) and high pressure (<250 psi) water. Right now I'm considering Victaulic Pressfit and Viega Propress mostly in 2". I'm hoping that once the dust settles the cost will be about the same but a faster install during the outage.

This is what I've seen so far:
Viega: lighter tools, special pipe required, equivalent to 5s wall thickness, smaller ID (CTS), faster crimp times, special crimping rings to get the crimp done in tight spots, 4" max, 300 psi

Propress: they have a new sched 10s system coming, anyones 10s pipe will do, bulkier tool, more robust pipe for handling and cutting, 2" max, 300 psi

Anyone care to add their 2 cents? Anyone looked at installed cost vs savings? Here in Canada it seems rates for good labour have been hiked-up by the oil patch.

 

[moltenmetal]

No experience with the Viega system but we've got some Pressfit tooling for sale if you want it- and it would probably be a good fit for your application.

We found Pressfit to be more costly in a SHOP environment verus threading. The services we were comparing it against were mostly Category D utilities where we were using threaded galvanized steel with 150# galv MI fittings, and when compared against that piping system it loses out by a wide margin in installed cost terms. In a shop environment it would, in my opinion, also lose out against sch40SS + 150# cast CF8M screwed fittings.

Beyond 2" we use roll-grooved conventional Victaulic in those services, and it's a great system when properly designed and specified.

For our modular systems, the extra fit-up length for every fitting adds up in a detrimental way. When we last used pressfit, their offering of valves was poor AND extremely expensive- a $20 3pc commodity ball valve becomes $100 when you weld two pieces of their sch5s pipe onto it so you can pressfit it into the line. If you're going to have to thread the valves in anyway to make them economical, buying adapters to make that possible, the benefit of pressfit is pretty modest.

These limitations considered, in a FIELD environment, where time is critical and skilled labour is expensive and in short supply, it could still be the best way to do the job.

Seriously: if you're interested, send me a private e-mail and we'll talk about the tooling. It's doubtful we'll ever use it again.