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Add Pierre, South Dakota, to the rapidly growing list of early adopters of AMERICAN Flow Control’s valves and hydrants with ALPHA™ restrained joint ends. Introduced last year, ALPHA saves labor, time and money.

By the end of the summer, the city of Pierre is expected to install between 75 and 100 AMERICAN Flow Control resilient wedge gate valves and Waterous Pacer^® fire hydrants with the ALPHA restrained joint.

“Pierre is one of the few cities that does its own installs,” said city of Pierre Water Superintendent Dane Brewer. “We were looking for something a little more efficient that would be easier on employees and allow us to get more work done, and we found it with ALPHA.”

 “We were looking for something a little more efficient that would be easier on employees and allow us to get more work done, and we found it with ALPHA.” – City of Pierre Water Superintendent Dane Brewer

“We really like the ease of ALPHA, and our employees love using it,” said Brewer. “The less bolts they have to crank, the better. The contractors had never seen it and thought the ALPHA’s one-bolt feature was the way to go. We’ve gotten good feedback from employees and contractors.”

Because of its success with ALPHA, Pierre has standardized its valve and hydrant specifications to include ALPHA. The city’s specifications also call for Waterous Pacer fire hydrants because of their quality.

The ALPHA restrained joint is used on AMERICAN’s Series 2500 4- to 12-inch Resilient Wedge Gate Valves and American-Darling and Waterous fire hydrants. Developed by Romac Industries, Inc., the ALPHA joint restraint can quickly be installed by one person, is compatible with several pipe materials and uses only one stainless steel bolt, versus up to eight bolts on each end of a standard mechanical joint valve. A video featuring the installation of an AMERICAN Flow Control Series 2500 with ALPHA retrained joint ends, as well as technical information, is available on AMERICAN’s website.