Boiler, chillers & cooling towers replacements

Henry

We closed 4 streets in Old Montreal on Friday at 9 PM. We started to uplift the new while downloading the old at 5 AM Saturday. We had to stop at 4 PM due to the wind. We strated again today at 5 AM. We needed to assemble the cooling towers. Each chiller weighs 18,000 Lbs. The crane weighs in at 800 tons. The building is 33 stories high. We cut a hole in the roof where they originaly had brung in the chillers and boilers. There are now 5 firetube boilers that will be replaced by 3 Buderus and two Airco (not our choice as they are a bag of problems!). There are over 20 Armstrong pumps in this contract of $7M of which over $300K is for the crane alone. The crane company has one bigger one of 1200 tons. This week on one our jobs, it smashed the windows on the 24th, 25th, and 26th due to high winds.

Henry

A few more pics

Here we are loading the second 18,000 Lbs chiller and some pipes.

pipeking

WHAtS GOING ON...

  that's a whole lot of pipe for boiler and chiller changeout. r the chiller going on the roof. the boilers r on the top floor right? what r the plate exchanges being used for? the units in the triaxle, r those blowers, or pump heads? what in this system u r installing is differant then the old system,other then the efficentcies of the power plant. e.g. all the pumps, prolly the exchanges,ect...

jumper

what a project ?

January in Montreal is a wonderful time to do this ?

Original designer was prescient to place stuff on top. So many buildings dropped equipment in sub-basement. Then a significant expense is just chopping and carrying out the old shells when it's time to replace. Replacement is modular.



I wonder why the machine floor isn't around the middle of the building height wise. Two sixteen floor high circuits sound easier than one thirty-three floor high ?



I've seen projects where towers are on ground. Then the replacement is air-cooled chillers and nuts to the old water cooled ones. Sometimes those air-cooled chillers use some thermal storage so that peak demand actually goes down.

Jamie Hall

Heck of a time of year

to be doing that sort of thing!  I just looked and it's 10 Fahrenheit outside where you are.  C'est tres froid, monsieur!



I caught the headline about the crane and the windows, too -- hard to not do that in the wind!

Henry

Towers

The boiler room is one level below where you see us stack the pipes. Boiler rooms here are always on top due to the pressure. We have some 10 air cooled heat exchangers to install on the roof in addition to the two cooling towers. All the original piping in the the two mechanical rooms was removed. We have pipes up to 14 inches in diameter in this install. We have two shifts working on the project as there is not much time.



Saturday morning, it was -23C or  -9.4F by the afternoon, it was a warm 5 F!

jumper

but why now ?

I forgot Quebec's onerous stationary engineering requirements. Is that why low pressure equipment gets such priority ?

Henry

Pressures

Not really as if you have 33 floors, you need to have a boiler certified for over 175 PSI operating pressure. We just finished one contract that an engineering firm from Toronto did not take into account the height and had us install a pair of Viessmann boiler that are 40 PSI below the operating pressure. Our engineer did not catch it either relying on the specs. So the Toronto fellas are trying to pump away and other tricks to get it to work. NADA, the gas code says that the appliance must be suitable for the site conditions. It is not, I win as it does not meet the site conditions and must be replaced with an appliance that can cope with the pressure!

jumper

new ASME stamp ?

If boilers are already installed, can an ASME stamp certified guy hydrostatically test them and increase their ratings ? I presume those Veissmann s are 15 psi so you need 55psi ? In my day heating boiler had to withstand a cold hydrostatic test 150% of operating pressure. Can then they take 80 PSIG static ? If they do, will the safety officials accept new rating ? I doubt that insurance company will, but it's worth a try.

tim smith

Re: under rated pressure boilers

Maybe they would be better off just piping in some high pressure plate and frame heat exchangers rather than boiler change?