Commercial Base-Loading Boilers

Kevin Stepp

Anyone here doing commercial base loading with high efficient boilers? If so how is it working? What are you using? And how are the paybacks?

Thanks
Kevin

Boilerpro

Yes,

I've done it with a Hydrotherm Multipulse AM-100 in a 10,000 sq ft circa 1960s church building. The pulse was part of the staged replacement of the heating plant and controls since the budget was limited. First boiler to go in was a 230,000 Burnham with Esbe Thermix valve for low temp and hot and cold shock protetion. A Tekmar 252 boiler control was also installed along with Honeywell 2 stage Chronotherm setback thermostats. First stage signaled the zone pump to turn on and the boiler conrol to run on the standard full outdoor reset curve. The second stage signaled the control into the over ride curve (the factory unoccupied curve) whcih was set higher to allow quick recovery of space temps. This equipment carried the structure down to about -7F, but no pick up capacity for sunday warm ups. The pulse went in after 2 winters. The chruch member that coordinates and does most of the maintenane on the structure is quite pleased with the saving over using just the 80% chimeny vent Burnham. The burnham almost never fires, so the pulse boiler is heavily loaded, allowing for a good return on teh investment, even here in northerm Illinois where natural gas is oftern 1/2 to 1/3 the price in the rest of teh country. This completed install has been in place about 5 years. Have another one in the works for another 45,000 church, when teh funds are raised.

Boilerpro

Chauncey

Where would I find more info on \"Baseloading?\"

If I understand from your discussions it would seem that this is a technique to allow buildings with old, huge, yet reliable heating plants, with multiple zones, and limited occupancies to function more economicaly.

I have a job where we installed an outdoor reset with a pump control panel. I installed an "Intermatic" manually operated timer and a relay for those times when occupancy is needed, or when you need a morning boost. The timer is located in the boileroom, with directions for use. The people who are in the building early know about it. The job has a mix of commercial baseboard, convectors, and fan-coils. It works ok. The biggest problem is that the people in the school wing do not want to leave their fans on low when they leave in the pm. They want to save energy, so they shut it off. The problem is that when they turn their fans on in their cool rooms in the am, the air is only lukewarm. They remember the way that the system used-to-be, and think that the system is broken--even though the other parts of the building have that cool-comfort feeling you get from continually circulating the correct temp water. All they need to do is to turn on the timer for an hour, and you can have all 2000 mbh of gagging heat capacity.

Boilerpro

The only place I've seen it.....

is in some of Hydrotherm's promotional literature. Supposedly, many government bodies in Canada are using this technique (and a few in the U.S., maybe the Navy). Makes alot of sense to me. Instead of replacing an old, but operational boiler with all new, keep it for that peak load that only occurs about 10 days a year and spend that money on super high efficiency 90%+ boilers that will be running near full load for 50% or more of the heating season. This should really give a quick payback and also help provide protection from the huge increases in energy costs that are on the way. If you find any other sources, I'd like to know!

Boilerpro