Central Shops: Plumbing, Steam, Refrigeration

Supervisor: Vacant
Contact Bill Grosso at 494-6384

The Plumbing and Steam Shop supplies plumbing and steam services to University buildings as well as performing preventive maintenance on all plumbing related equipment in all of Purdue's facilities both on and off campus. This unit consists of a supervisor, crew chief, four plumbers and two steam fitters. 

Areas of responsibility include: maintaining drains, sewage ejector pumps, toilet fixtures, lab fixtures, steam and chilled water lines and coils and domestic hot water heaters and water softeners and excavating broken pipes. Currently there are over 1,000 pressure vessels that are inspected yearly to meet state requirements and over 900 backflow-preventers that also require annual and semi annual certification for the state.

The Refrigeration Shop performs a variety of cooling related tasks which include: handling exotic gases used in laboratory equipment, certifying and preparing new laboratory refrigeration equipment prior to being placed into service and providing preventive maintenance in support of the stewardship mission of Physical Facilities.  Decommissioning old refrigeration equipment and recovering the coolant is a major activity for the shop.

Work in the Refrigeration Shop is performed by one crew chief and four technicians.  The Refrigeration Shop uses state of the art software for maintaining EPA-mandated tracking records for various gases The refrigeration shop was the recipient of a national award for excellence in 2008 for their implementation of the program.

Read about their award in the Winter 2008 QSP Report.