Dragon Slayers...(ME)

Constantin

... believe it or not, in a lot of firms a ROI that corresponds to a 5 year payback is not good enough. They're looking for the 2-3 year paybacks... Indeed, given those conditions, fuel and energy do not cost enough yet.

I blame, in part, the rate structure chosen by regulators for fuel and energy delivery. Ideally, one would only offer minimal discounts for large fuel/energy deliveries to not discourage energy conservation at a instutional level.

Anyway, most importantly, congrats on fixing a terribly unhappy system and boosting efficiency to boot. It must be a great feeling to step back and see the joy in your customers face.

Mark Eatherton1

2.5 million btu displaced by 600,000 btu worth of Dragon Slaying

MUNCHKINS!!

The scene: 14 story concrete high rise built in 1961. Supporting cast of mechanical characters: 2 each Rite Horizontal tube water tube boilers, normally aspirated, 2.5 million btuH each, a MONGO shell and tube heat exchanger. Each boiler had a minimum of 5 lbs of washers weighting down its barometric damper. Excess air = 300%, negative draft at boiler breach -.10" W.C. (thats NOT a misprint)Combustion efficiency ~65%.

The solution: Chop and drop one of the 2.5 mill fire breathing dragons. Set up 3 119 gallon HTP tanks with three M-199 boilers mounted on a deck built over the top of the storage tanks. System initally set up to do hot water and space heating. Turned DHW system on, turned remaining fire breathing dragon off. Building immediately became 20 degrees cooler over night. Removed 5# weights holding barometric damper closed, an dinserted 9" restrictive orifices into the breachings of 2.5 mill boilers to lower draft to -.02" W.C. Combustion efficiency immediately came up to 82%, excess air ~ 30%. Installed two stage boiler control, and Vision 1 controls on Munchies.

Results: After first month of operation, property realized a 50% reduction in fuel consumption for heating DHW. Still waiting for heating season savings, but a conservative estimate of a 30% reduction in fuel consumption (piece of cake) will result in a simple cash on cash ROI of less than 5 years....

Questions welcome.

ME

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Dave Yates (PAH)

only one question Prof ME

Why is America so slow to wake up and smell the coffee???

Nicely done - as always.

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S Ebels

Same old problems Dave

Make it as cheap as possible up front.

Fuel doesn't cost enough yet.

Shortsighted fools.

S Ebels

Upon further cogitation...........

2.5 million x .65 comb efficiency = 1,625,000 output.

HMMMmmmmmmmm

You replaced that with 600 running at 90% which is roughly 540,000 out.

HHHhhhhmmmmmmmm

Could we conclude that the original install was sized using the finger method? Must have used both hands!!!!!

Mark Eatherton1

Good question Doctor Yates...

BTW, I previewed your DVD with my students last night. They all wanted a copy to take to their bosses to show them what they learnt in school!! Excellent production. Kudos to you and your staff.

I thnk it's probably going to take a major shortage, and a doubling of the cost of the commodity to wake these people up. You can stand on the street corner and preach conservation to the masses all day long, and they'll smile and nod in aggreance (somebody elses word, no points..)but will actually do very little to conserve. Now, raise the price of the commodity so it hits them in the wallet and watch them JUMP. "NOT MY MONEY!!" They scream, as they grab their hind sides in disbelief that someone would try and take more of their hard earned money.

Our local utility just raised thier rates about 70% last year. That's why we were asked to look at this building as a candidate for conservation. Conservation of the owners' MONEY.

We performed a reverse analysis based on actual occupancy loading and degree day data and skin losses, and came back at them with a plan to reduce their annual thermal energy consumption by 30%. THe proposal looked VERY appealing. They signed, we started the work in two weeks, and finished in 3 weeks. Total down time to the residents was less than 3 hours while we cut the new system into the old system. THe actual turn over was virtually seamless. The residents didn't even know we'd brought the new system on line except for the fact that the core of the building cooled down about 20 degrees F. They didn't complain.

As for sizing, our reverse analys determined that the base load of the building was running about 500,000 btuH. It was not our intent to completely eliminate the use of the Rite boilers,instead, we planned on "base loading" the building with the high efficiency system, and augmenting with the less efficient boiler as needed. In talking to the maintenance man of 20 years, he said he never had to run both boilers at once, and th e only time he'd seen the boilers trunning at full tilt was during peak DHW loads in the AM. The rest of the time the fire breathing dragon just sat there, running at 1/3 capacity, wasting energy up the flue. I don't think the combustion analysis was showing the whole picture. There were times when we were doing the conversion, that the boiler was running, and I know for a fact that there were NO loads, because we had the water shut off, and the pumps were isolated with valves. I think the boiler was running just trying to recover its own stack losses...

But I digress Dave, America does need to wake up to this new technology. The engineers of today are still making the same silly mistakes of gross oversizing that they made 40+ years ago, except today they're doing it with copper fin tube boilers instead of horizontal water tube boilers.

And the application of condensing boilers in this scneario makes all the sense in the world, even though the distribution system is considered high temp (commercial BBR) due to the inherent thermal efficiency o fthis technology versus the wide open, uncontrolled dilution air boilers that are being used today. CAll me crazy, even stupid for the misapplication if you want to, but the proof is in the pudding, er the utility bill savings...

BTW, the owners hired a mechanical engineer to review our design prior to signing the contract. He told them it was one of the best leading edge technology applications he'd seen in his 30 years of mechanical enginnering. He's calling US now asking US questions about what we would do if we had a building that had fire breathing dragons in it...

The time is now.

ME

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Mark Eatherton1

I have something working substantially in my favor Steve....

Flywheel mass effect. This building has 1 foot thick concrete floors, 6 inch thick interior concrete/masonry walls and double pane glass windows throughout.

We are studying this building as a model with DEEP interest. Once the battery is charged, it takes very little external energy to keep it trucking along. God forbid that it ever cools down during a cold snap:-( It could take MONTHS to get the flywheel back up to speed:-)

I still thik back to what the old maintenance man told me, and think about what we did to the thermal efficiency of the physical plant, and I smile...

And we're not done yet! They have 2 each 5 horse power base mount pumps that we'll be retrofitting with variable frequency drive controllers based on delta P. It's AMAZING what those babies will do for zone valve blow by...

Stay tuned.

ME

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Dale Pickard

Good deal Mark,

It's amazing how much energy is wasted through stupidity and design and application negligence. I think the engineering community is remiss. Do you have any photos of the dragons slayed?

Dale

Weezbo

I have a very happy feilling....:)

if theres one thing that can be said for actually understanding what a system is and its requirements...is the ""That!!! is to replace the monster that usedto live in this Room? Its Great !:)) you needent worry about down time with that much mass...it would take weeks to drain the heat out of it in 20 Below Theres alot to be said for reducing the twenty ->48 "round Incinerator stove pipe vent for a 9" round:)))) where did the owner find enough money to heat that State? ))

Dave Yates (PAH)

energy costs rising

Thanks ME. They can obtain a copy by visiting wattsreg.com.

As Rich pointed out at ISH, these are the most exciting times in which to be in this trade. I've never seen a time like this when high efficiency equipment was so easy to sell. Did you calculate their ROI and use same in the sales pitch? I'm finding the ROI in residential applications far outstrips anything the stock market offers. Typically runs 14% or higher & that's a tax free ROI.

We're getting some serious nibbles from commercial accounts, which will become full fledged hook, line & sinker sales once high fuel bills smack em in the chops again this year. By next year, I fully expect commercial sales to skyrocket.

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S Ebels

Exactly the same situation Mark................

I looked at a school last year that had the exact pair you describe. Old water tube + copper fin side by side. They had replaced one of the water tubes due to maint issues along with the promise of increased efficiency four years ago. Sad to say neither desired result happened. The building is a school built in the 40's and is much the same as you are dealing with. All I can say is concrete, bricks and block must have been very cheap because there is a lot of it in there.

After watching the system run and doing some investigative snooping for a few hours a host of problems were apparent. The old pnuematic control system was completely clueless as to what it was trying to do. Thermostats and sensors missing or non-operable, air leaking, etc. The filter dryer had been discombobulated and was laying in chunks on the floor. The maint guy told me it had been that way for years. (wonder how much water is in the air system?)

The thing that really stuck out was the way whomever had installed the 1.5Mbtu Raypak in place. The old water tube had 4" pipe feeding it. The Raypak didn't have 4" tappings so they just necked it down to 2" copper and connected it. Both boilers are piped in a simple parallel arrangement with the water tube first on/fisrt off. Guess which one is getting all the flow. They were operating the Raypak, presumably due to hihger efficiency, with the water tube not isolated from the system. CAN WE SAY SHORT CYCLE???
The Raypak was firing, I'm not kidding I timed it with my watch, 14 seconds on 18 seconds off and repeating constantly. This was at an ambient of 11* on that particular day. I just couldn't believe it. What was even harder to believe was that after looking at my proposal, they said there weren't that many problems with the system. It just cost a lot to operate!!! Duh? 33,000 sq ft and a $7,200 natural gas bill + the building won't heat correctly + the Raypak is going to die? Yep, there aren't that many problems. This was back when gas was $.58/therm. It's now $.86 here and I'm expecting a call that goes like this. "Can you just fix a few things before winter?"

Yeah Right!! We'll be over directly!!

Mark Eatherton1

Unfortunately...

the photos of the extracation were on my old digital camera, which was in my vehicle that got stolen. I got the vehilce back thanks to LoJack, but it was minus around 3,000 $ worth of tools and equipment. Some idiot (ME) left the keys in the ignition, jumped out to run into the office for a minute, got distracted (DOH) and came back out to a missing car... One of the most boneheaded moves I've ever done. Made me feel about an inch tall.

The only solice in the whole situation was the story that kept running through my head of when Dan and Marriane were on their honeymoon, and Dan pulls up to the luxurious hotel, and tosses his keys to the valet, only to find out later that the hotel didn't have a valet...and Dan no longer had a car:-)

The photo marked tolstoi1 with the blue thing at the lower left is the boiler. It was just your typical horizontal water tube boiler. Real similar to an Ajax, except it had two 14 inch breachings coming out of its top. Those went up to a 22" header with a barometric damper on one end. We had to put restrictive orifices (guillotines with holes) 9" in diameter in to those breachings to choke the draft back. Amazing what 14 stories of masonry chimney can draw...

ME

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Bryan_16

reducers

Are those 3 x 4 eccentric couplings? Have been told to make my 3 to 4 changes at ellbows with 4 x 3 closet ell.

Mark Eatherton1

Yes, concentric

We had some severe height restrictions to deal with on this job and couldn't do the 4X3 elbow and maintain the required length of 3" before going to 4". My supplier (WSI in Denver 303-629-6122) found these at his sister comapny in Colorado Springs. Thanks Charels!! They're working great.

ME

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