The Chicago Plumbers Local 130 officially opened its new, $21 million, 50,000-square-foot training center on Sept. 12 in the city’s West Loop neighborhood.

The three-story building will offer technology-related, "green" and traditional plumbing skills courses. To do that, the facility has typical classrooms reserved to teach students about water heaters and backflow preventions, but also features a “hot work” lab with 20 booths for welding, cutting, soldering and brazing, and a three-story workshop with multistory construction and an underground pit for installing pipe.

The building itself functions as classroom and features a green roof, solar thermal power and rainwater harvesting and grey water reclamation systems.

Look for more coverage in our October issues of PHC News and Plumbing Engineer.