Installations
Summers & Zims Handles
Multi-Oil Boiler Install
There have been a lot of creative ways to provide
emergency heat to buildings during no-heat situations,
but maybe none as original as a project
completed earlier this year at an upscale rural property
near Reading, PA.
Half of the building features an indoor tennis court, while the other half
houses the pool, kitchen and locker rooms.
The 12,500 sq ft building, one of many on the 100-acre
property, houses a heated pool, spa, full-sized tennis court,
kitchen and locker rooms. When the old sectional boiler
used to heat the facility failed mid-Winter, maintenance
staff turned the pool water temperature way up. This not
only held the natatorium at a safe temperature, but
waste heat from the pool heating equipment kept the
adjacent tennis court from freezing.
Mechanical contractor Summers & Zims in Atglen,
PA, was called in January to handle the no-heat
call. The 37-person company had previously served
the property owner in 2013 for an installation of an
extensive snowmelt system.
Joe Henderson, Plumbing Project Manager, responded
to the call and found that the large boiler
was beyond repair; a replacement was needed immediately.
“Jason Richards, at Hajoca, and I began designing
a replacement,” said Henderson. “There was
a 500-gallon fuel oil tank on the property for the
hydronic system and backup generator, and there
was also a liquefied petroleum (LP) tank for the pool
heater.
“The problem with replacing the original oil boiler
with a propane unit was that the existing LP tank
Jason Richards
Heating Sales Hajoca Corp.
wasn’t large enough to handle the additional load. Plus, a
second LP tank wasn’t immediately available.”
It became the first instance wherein major product
availability issues would impact design process decisions
for the companies. Luckily, the supply chain challenges
ultimately resulted in a better system than originally
planned.
Collaborative design
The design became a multi-boiler approach. The original
plan was to install a single large sectional boiler, but,
again, supply chain issues caused some trouble. After consulting
with Dave Raabe at ROI Marketing, the companies
learned that the boiler they wanted wouldn’t be available
for a few weeks.
“This project took place at the height of the product
availability challenge,” said Raabe. “The larger boilers
weren’t available, so we looked at using three smaller
MPO-IQ boilers, made by U.S. Boiler Co.
“These were immediately available. Ultimately, installing
three boilers provided three stages of heat input for
higher efficiency, and it also provided a level of redundancy.
The smaller boilers also meant that the units could
be wheeled into the mechanical on hand carts, instead of
being field-assembled.”
As a result, the design team selected three 189 MBH
boilers. continues
Kenny Walker, Summers & Zims HVAC trainer and in-house tech support, installs
a Tigerloop Ultra oil line de-aerator on all three oil-fired MPO-IQ boilers that now
serve the hydro-air system at the recreation building.
6 ICM/September/October 2022