Author: Jeff Shaffer, Graco Product Manager

For large open-air football stadiums, cold weather can bring a few safety concerns. Temperatures below freezing can cause ice buildup on seating and walkways throughout the concourse, which causes potential safety hazards for fans. Combatting hazardous ice buildup in such a large area has been a re-occurring problem for many open-air stadium such as FirstEnergy, home of the Cleveland Browns. Up until recently, there haven’t been any proven methods that meet all requirements to disperse deicing materials for an application this scale.

One such stadium needed a method to disperse a glycol based de-icing material, which is slightly thicker than windshield washer fluid and functions similar to road salt, efficiently across the three levels of the stadium. The stadium contacted their material supplier to find a pump that would work well with industrial sprayers. Their supplier turned to a Graco Process equipment expert at Koehler Rubber to find something that could suit their needs. Air operated pumps were out of the question because the stadium does not have access to a large enough air compressor. The stadium also needed to find a pump that could stall under pressure to operate with the opening and closing of spray guns, and they wanted enough pressure and flow to spray large sections of the stadium quickly and effectively.

Graco Husky 1050e

Together, Koehler and Graco brought in the Graco Husky 1050e, an electrically operated double diaphragm pump, to perform a live demonstration of the pump’s capabilities. It was quickly apparent that the Husky 1050e could work with the spray gun setup and conquer the stadium’s pressure and flow requirements. With the 1050e, two guns could spray 12 to 15 gallons to coat one section of the stadium in about three minutes. Using about 8 GPM and 40 to 50 PSI, each gun could spray about 22 feet with a spray patters 7 feet wide, which was much better coverage than other pump option they had seen. The stadium also learned that they could wheel the electric pump on a cart to different locations where the de-icing material would be staged in order to make spraying simple and efficient. In the end, the stadium determined they would only need a few pumps per level to keep the entire stadium de-iced.

Download this whitepaper: Reducing Energy Consumption With Graco Husky 1050e.