Note: This article was written in collaboration with Chicago Faucets, celebrating 125 years of commercial plumbing solutions for high-traffic institutional environments. Learn more at Chicago Faucets.
When you are working through a commercial building specification, you are making hundreds of decisions across dozens of systems. Each division of the project manual represents a set of performance commitments that will live in that building for decades.
Plumbing fittings sit in Division 22. They are not the most complex system in the building, and they rarely drive the design conversation. But in schools, stadiums, airports, and recreation facilities - environments where thousands of people interact with plumbing fixtures every single day - the specification decision matters in ways that go well beyond finish selection. A fitting that fails under sustained use, that cannot be repaired in the field, that drives up maintenance labor, or that creates water quality risk is a problem that will land on someone's desk for the entire life of the building.
Chicago Faucets has been engineering commercial plumbing fittings since 1901. What 125 years in high-traffic institutional environments teaches a manufacturer is this: function and endurance are not secondary to aesthetics. They are the specification.
The Early Years of Chicago Faucets
Chicago Faucets founder and CEO Albert C. Brown (third from left) stands with members of his executive staff outside the company's original Chicago facility, where the revolutionary Quaturn® cartridge system was developed. This was one of many innovations that established Chicago Faucets as a leader in commercial plumbing technology. Below, skilled polishers and buffers (left) shape raw brass into precision components using belt-driven grinding wheels, while the assembling department (right) shows men and women working side by side to build the faucets that would earn Chicago Faucets its 125-year reputation for quality, durability, and craftsmanship.
Built for Sustained Use
The durability case for Chicago Faucets starts at the material level. Commercial fittings are constructed from heavy-duty low lead brass with corrosion-resistant internal components, and many include vandal-resistant outlets and controls. Locker rooms, pool decks, outdoor wash areas, and public restrooms face constant wear, moisture, and conditions that expose engineering shortcuts quickly. The company is launching a series of unplated brass fittings this summer, ideal for seaside locations.
The Quaturn® cartridge was built around rebuildability. Rather than designing fittings for replacement when components wear out, the cartridge system was designed for field repair with swappable, standardized, and interchangeable parts across product families. For a facilities team managing dozens of buildings on a university campus, or a maintenance crew responsible for restrooms spread across a major airport terminal, that parts continuity is the difference between a system that works and one that doesn't.
Another example of interchangeability is the conversion of Chicago Faucets manual faucets to one-touch metering operation with the MVP metering kit without replacing the fitting body and vice versa.
In renovation projects, which describe a large share of the work happening in aging schools and university buildings, it is a practical path to improved hygiene and water control without the cost or disruption of full fixture replacement.
For institutional projects where specifications need to hold up over a 30-to-50-year building lifecycle, parts remain available and components remain backward-compatible. Maintenance teams don't find themselves hunting for discontinued cartridges in a building that still has 20 years of useful life ahead of it.
Aligned with Sustainability Targets
Sustainability has moved from an institutional aspiration to a requirement. LEED certification targets and EPA WaterSense mandates are now embedded in the specifications that facility teams and their engineering partners are working against. Plumbing fittings are part of that calculation.
Chicago Faucets addresses the energy side by offering automatic faucets with water turbine technology and also addresses the maintenance side by offering sensor faucets with 15-year batteries. The touchless portfolio includes electronic faucets available with self-powered systems, generating electricity from the flow of water through a micro-turbine. In a stadium restroom bank or an airport terminal with hundreds of faucets across multiple concourses, that means no conduit runs, no battery replacement cycles, no standby power draw, and no hazardous battery waste stream.
Three series define the primary touchless architectural portfolio. The EQ® Series suits retail, public spaces, and architectural environments where visual design matters alongside structural resilience. The Alpina® Series offers an elevated geometric spout profile suited to corporate campuses, higher education facilities, and cultural venues.
The E-Tronic® 80 Series, with heavy-duty brass valve body and easily accessible valve and electronics, is built for the high-traffic conditions of stadium concourses, airport terminals, transit hubs, and arenas. They are engineered to generate adequate power at ultra-low flow rates, with fittings available at 0.35 GPM and higher for maximum water-efficiency credit under LEED v5.0. The company allows specifiers to estimate water savings and to meet a specific building needs easily.
Water conservation is also built into the reengineered MVP® Series metering portfolio, with preset run times that limit excessive flow without depending on user behavior. In high-traffic school restrooms or stadium concourses where thousands of activations happen in compressed windows of time, that controlled run time adds up to measurable savings across a season or a school year.
Hygiene at Scale
Stadiums, airports, recreation facilities, and universities share a common hygiene challenge: intensive use by large numbers of people, variable occupancy, and maintenance teams that cannot be everywhere at once.
Chicago Faucets' sensor-operated fittings reduce cross-contamination risk by eliminating touch at the faucet, and are compatible with ADA accessibility requirements. The dual-beam dynamic sensor technology in the E-Tronic® 80 Series was designed specifically for the sustained activation demands of high-traffic environments, where sensor reliability under heavy use matters more than in occasional-use settings.
The E-Tronic® 80 SoapBank™, introduced this year, brings the same thinking to soap delivery. A 13-liter centralized bulk reservoir supplies up to four dispensers from a single refill point, eliminating individual dispenser rounds in busy facilities and reducing the plastic waste stream from disposable soap containers.
Chicago Faucets' Auto-Drain® valve technology addresses stagnation at the fitting level for shower applications, automatically purging standing water from the shower column after each use. For facilities reopening after extended closure, or any environment where occupancy fluctuates seasonally, an automatic drain removes a key stagnation condition without requiring staff intervention.
Connected Visibility, Automated Flushing & Temp Monitoring
For facility teams managing large or multi-building environments, Chicago Faucets' CF Connect platform gives maintenance personnel Bluetooth-enabled access to configure compatible faucets, set flushing schedules, and download usage logs from a smartphone or tablet. CF Connect PLUS extends that to the system level, with automated hygiene and pipe flushing, real-time temperature monitoring, and digital documentation integrated through a centralized Gateway and optional connection of BMS over BACnet/IP. This provides for subscription-less, simplified water management, and healthcare compliance.
125 Years, and Still the Right Fit
A manufacturer that has been solving commercial plumbing problems since 1901 has had time to understand what institutional facilities actually need. Not the lowest upfront cost, but the lowest total cost over a building's useful life. Not the most features, but the right features for the environments where the products will actually live.
Chicago Faucets' 125th year brings a connected water management platform, enhanced commercial fittings, a centralized soap dispensing system, and an expanded portfolio of faucet looks and finishes. The engineering foundation underneath all of it is the same one that has been there since the beginning: built to last, and built for the buildings that never stop.
To explore Chicago Faucets products in more detail, visit www.chicagofaucets.com and you can download their Revit files on BIMsmith.
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