Restroom Care: Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Tighten Up

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As director of stadium operations for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, a minor league baseball team located near Appleton, Wis., Justin Johnson has plenty to keep him busy without having to grab a wrench and tighten up loose toilet seats.

But that’s exactly what Johnson used to find himself doing far too often.

All that changed this past summer when Bemis Manufacturing teamed up with Bassett Mechanical to make the Timber Rattlers an offer that was too good to refuse.

“Bemis asked us if we knew of a good place to test their new Sta-Tite® Commercial Fastening System™,” said Mark Huiting, plumbing department manager for Bassett Mechanical, a contracting/engineering firm in Appleton, Wis. “We service the Timber Rattlers and knew they had some issues with the toilet seats getting loose all the time. We called them up and they agreed to let us test the new system at their stadium.”

The Timber Rattlers’ stadium seats 5,500 fans and has seasonal attendance of about 240,000 at games and events between April and September. Not counting dugout restrooms, there are 17 public and private toilets in the facility.

Bassett tightens all the seats at the start and end of the season and, if called out to the stadium for other reasons during the season, tightens any loose seats. Usually, however, the seat tightening duties fell to Johnson.

In July 2008, the Timber Rattlers allowed Bassett to replace 12 of the stadium’s traditional seats and mountings with Bemis seats utilizing the new Sta-Tite® Commercial Fastening System™.  The installation included public restrooms and an office restroom.

Since the installation, Johnson has not had to tighten a single seat. Loose seats have become a non-issue, he said.
 
The Sta-Tite system uses breakthrough technology that outperforms traditional stainless steel fasteners and is up to 33 percent faster to install than conventional fasteners, creating significant savings in installation time and labor.

Sta-Tite features a patented single-piece fastener that includes a glass-filled nylon nut with integrated washer. After finger tightening, installers use a 5/8-inch wrench to fully tighten the lower section of the nut, which is designed to shear away when the proper torque is achieved. This allows installers to quickly achieve the exact amount of torque to keep seats securely fastened without over-tightening.

The glass-filled nylon nut produces less friction during tightening compared to stainless steel, which gives the Sta-Tite system as much clamping force at 80 to 100 inch/pounds as stainless steel does at 200 inch/pounds.

The Sta-Tite hinge body also has a finned bushing inside that eliminates gaps between the bolt and the hole. The bushing, which is molded on the glass-filled propylene hinge body, centers the bolt in the hole.

Maximizing installation and service efficiencies is important to plumbing contractors, especially in commercial jobs such as stadiums or office buildings.

“For a facility like ours with a high volume of traffic over a short period of time, there’s no better way to go,” Johnson said.