Walter F. Morris Co. Uses Above-Floor Plumbing to Create Working Fixture Displays in New Showroom

Showroom director Scott Chiras chose Saniflo’s Sanibest Pro grinder pump to help drive live training demos, educating wholesalers, the trades, and agency sales personnel on its various manufacturer-partner products.

Problem

FOXBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS — Premier manufacturers’ representatives like Walter F. Morris Company have a mission not only to help move high-quality products through the wholesale channel but also to educate the various plumbing, HVAC/R, and kitchen and bath design trades on how these products can be properly used. These industry trades often discover new product solutions at local showrooms but are left wondering how a product functions or why it might be a good fit for an application.

How, then, can they solve the application challenges of their own customers?

That is why Walter Morris, whose sales territory spans the entire New England region, recently unveiled a new in-house showroom dedicated to professional product training. The goal? Recruit various industry trade pros for training on the agency’s manufacturer partner products.

“We’re not trying to sell out of the showroom,” explains Walter Morris Director of Showroom Sales Scott Chiras, who adds that the facility is not open to the public. “It’s meant for us to teach supply house salespeople, contractors, and designers how they can use these products.”

Walter Morris plans to deploy the in-house showroom in various ways for its audiences. For example:

• To invite distributors with no showrooms to stage their own training sessions for their plumber-customers.
• To work with plumbers and remodelers looking for stock items to promote to property owners.
• To allow small remodeling companies to use the showroom for training their sales personnel before subbing out the plumbing and HVAC work to other contractors.
• To invite any and all distributors to use it simply to promote the Morris showroom lines.

Chiras handled the decorative side of the in-house showroom project, and his goal was to display products that would best represent the agency’s manufacturer-partners, including those that could benefit from working displays for live demonstrations.

Specifically, Chiras wanted the showroom to display two operating tubs: “I wanted the tubs to be working with running water, so I needed a way to evacuate that water from the showroom,” he says.

To make this work using conventional plumbing, the installer would need to jackhammer the floor to create drainage, a costly project Walter Morris understandably wanted to avoid. This led Chiras to explore other, not-so-conventional options.

Flipping through a Saniflo catalog to learn more about its up-flush systems, Chiras quickly realized the new showroom could actively demonstrate the benefits of Saniflo’s technology in multiple ways.

Because it can handle drainage from up to three fixtures, recalls Chiras, “We saw that could tie the Saniflo product to a water closet in the showroom while also using it to evacuate the water from both working tubs. So, it was a problem-solver for our tub-drainage needs while also allowing us to demo the Saniflo solution live.”

Solution

Chiras decided that Saniflo’s Sanibest Pro would be ideal for demonstrating Saniflo’s above-floor plumbing solution as well as handling drainage for other working fixture displays. But Chiras talked with other wholesale partners about the unit and its features to ensure he was selecting the right unit. They readily confirmed his decision.

Normally for heavily used public facilities, such as office, school, retail, or warehouse restrooms, the rugged, one-horsepower Sanibest Pro grinder is engineered to quickly dispose of larger objects that shouldn’t really be flushed and might clog a conventional toilet, even a commercial model. Water and organic waste matter enter the chamber of the grinding unit and are reduced to slurry by the cutting blades rotating at 3,600 RPM. This effluent is then discharged through a small-diameter, rigid plastic pipe to the sanitary stack, with maximum pumping distances up to 25 feet vertically or 150 feet horizontally.

Of course, the Sanibest Pro in the new Walter Morris showroom would not operate as a conventional working toilet. Instead, it doubles as a straightforward working display while handling gray water drainage from the two working bathtubs: an air tub and a freestanding model.

After making his selection, Chiras called Geoff O’Leary of O’Leary Plumbing & Heating to help with the installation. Fortunately, O’Leary was well-versed in the technology, having worked with the Edison, NJ-based company and its products throughout his 20-year plumbing career.

“I’m very familiar with the Saniflo product,” says O’Leary. “It’s so user-friendly, and I’ve installed many in the past.”

Here’s how Morris showroom plumbing was set up:

• Tub drain line to the grinder: The Sanibest Pro is displayed at one end of the showroom, with two tubs set adjacent to it on one side (photo). “I wanted to make it clear to showroom visitors how the Saniflo unit can be a problem-solver,” explains Chiras. The tubs drain through a 1½ to 2-inch PVC pipe that transitions to copper before connecting to the Sanibest Pro.
• Discharge line from the grinder: Gray-water effluent from the Sanibest Pro exits through a ¾-inch PVC discharge line that runs 10 feet vertically and 50 feet horizontally. This line then empties into a mop sink that is connected to the building’s main drainage line. A local inspector overseeing the Morris showroom project approved this method.

Vent line from the grinder: The 1½-inch vent line, also made of PVC, runs approximately 80 feet from the Sanibest Pro before being tied into the building’s existing vent system.

Results

The complete installation took about 16 hours, split into two eight-hour days, with no challenges, reports O’Leary.

Although this is Walter Morris’s first time using a Saniflo product in their showroom, Chiras was very confident in the Sanibest Pro’s ability to perform well during the company’s training sessions and whenever showroom visitors are looking for a tub demonstration.

“It has worked great,” says Chiras, who has successfully conducted several training sessions in his new facility, including one with Saniflo Regional Sales Director Kevin Schink.

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ABOUT SANIFLO
SFA SANIFLO U.S.A. – whose parent company originated macerating plumbing technology — offers a complete line of waste and drainage pumping systems for residential and commercial applications. Saniflo developed its innovative, “above-floor plumbing” technology more than a half-century ago and has led its commercialization worldwide. Today, the company markets macerating technology through 24 subsidiaries in 50 countries and has sold more than seven million units worldwide since 1958. Saniflo markets through independent sales agents throughout North America, and the product line is currently available at distributor and dealer locations throughout the United States and Canada.

For more information, contact Saniflo at 1-800-571-8191. Or visit the Saniflo website at saniflo.com.

For editorial assistance, including photography, contact John O’Reilly c/o GreenHouse Digital + PR: 708-428-6385 or [email protected].