According to the American Hospital Association, nearly 37 million people are admitted to a hospital every year in the United States. Hospitals and health care facilities have a more varied population than other buildings due to the range of ages and the conditions for which patients are treated.

While the saying “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” may be popular among those who skirt tragedy through life, it is not an attitude we can adopt as engineers.

The KWCS flow splitter is a flow-control valve that provides the plumbing designer with an innovative option for designing piping layouts for both hot- and coldwater distribution, Kemper Water Control Systems says.

The committee will use NSF 444: Prevention of Injury and Disease Associated with Building Water Systems as the base document.

Implementing a water management program is probably the most daunting and crucial task of ASHRAE 188. Fortunately, there is a formulaic process for doing so, illustrated below.

Unintended consequences, that close cousin of mislaid plans, can claim some responsibility for a current conundrum: low-flow fixtures paired with existing oversized piping helped create the growing crisis of legionella bacteria.

Most plumbing engineers involved in healthcare design who I’ve talked to have said their foremost design concern is waterborne bacterial control in general, and legionella in particular.

Construction, renovation and maintenance of building water systems in complex facilities is inevitable, and each event may pose an infection risk from waterborne pathogens, particularly in healthcare or long-term care settings.