BOILERS: REPAIR OR REPLACE? P.2

Boilers generally turn on and off when the outside temperature rises and falls, or when a given apartment's thermostat calls for heat. "That one cold apartment is the reason why the rest of the building has the windows open," says mechanical engineer Henry Gifford, who works with the noted environmental architect Chris Benedict. This common problem, which electronic monitoring systems aim to correct, afflicted Deepdale Gardens, a 69-building cooperative in Little Neck, N.Y.

Herb Flachner, Deepdale's director of operations and a building-maintenance veteran of 40 years, became a believer in the microprocessor-controlled fuel-saving device IntelliCon-CHW (see at left), which was installed on each of the 25 Deepdale boilers in 2006. The gadget works by measuring the rate of change of the temperature of circulating water, as often as three times per second, and delays the firing of burners as much as two-thirds of the time. By increasing the length of time water is circulating without the addition of more heat, and strategically turning furnaces on and off, the gadgets, Flachner says, saved Deepdale 18 percent on its annual fuel bill of over a million dollars in 2007. Each unit cost $5,500, so implementing them, he adds, "paid for itself in the first year."

An advocate of "try before you buy," Flachner had the CHW units installed on two boilers as a test before ordering a full complement. Last summer, he conducted an additional study by operating boilers with and without the IntelliCon system and saw a savings of about $150 per week per boiler on the production of hot water.

Paul Mazza, president of Energy Conservation Services, a company that sells IntelliCon-CHW, says his system can generally reduce fuel costs by at least one-fifth and that "payback on installation is never more than six months."

Heat Cycling: Reducing It Wirelessly

Temperature balancing was also an issue at a Long Island property. Sharon Messier, resident manager of Forest Green Luxury Apartments in Islip, New York, oversees a 257-unit house complex, ranging from 16 to 39 units apiece, which are fed by 12 boilers. In 2005, she faced that familiar problem of some apartments being chronically overheated while others could never get warm enough. The issue wasn't the boiler, however, but simply the way the circulating heat was being distributed.

Working with the Peconic Energy & Environmental Corporation, a.k.a. Pepco, of Deer Park, N.Y., Forest Green's board asked Messier to oversee the installation of the Energuard Wireless Heat Computer (see at right) and the placing of sensors at strategic points throughout the property, to take into account temperature variations for different exposures. The sensors tally temperatures across the co-op and a computer uses the different inputs to calculate when to fire the boiler.

The system allows for minute control over temperature and boiler running time. Says Messier: "During the nighttime hours, we have the boiler set to roll back to 68 degrees. Daytime, when residents are returning home, we allow the temperatures to go up to between 71 and 72 for [people taking] showers and getting ready for bed. At about 4 A.M., we turn the temperatures back up again."

Messier keeps tabs on the system using a laptop in her office, "which gives us readings throughout the day and night of the temperatures in the apartments, when the boilers came on, and how long they ran for."

Elaine Bovick, board president at the time Energuard was installed, says the decision was a matter of necessity. "We were burdened with several older boilers" that weren't operating fuel-efficiently.

William Rattmer, one of two board members who researched the use of Energuard, says Allan Richman of Peconic Energy "made a couple of presentations, and we went to two buildings, one in Manhattan and one in the Bronx," where Energuard was installed. "The one in Manhattan takes up a whole city block, whereas Forest Green is spread out across 18 acres. But we thought it could work and we did test cases in two of our buildings." It took the board two years of such research before deciding to install the system; the rising price of oil was a major factor.

Before buying, however, they tested it. The trial pitted Energuard in one building in the complex against standard boiler operations in a comparable one. The result, says resident manager Messier, was a 46 percent savings in fuel consumption and a similar reduction in the number of heat cycles in the controlled building.

"People were skeptical," Rattmer says, "but before this system, uneven heating was rampant. Everybody would keep their thermostats up all the way, and some people were roasting while in other apartments it was 40 degrees."

As part of the upgrade, Forest Green replaced five old boilers with new ones and installed water heaters so that the boilers would not have to run in the summer to provide hot water only. "People are people," says Bovick, "and sometimes it's a lot easier to open a window than it is to turn down the heat. With this temperature control system, there's a lot more control over the amount of heat that's going to each building."

And repair or replace, cleanliness and control equal efficiency and savings.

Adapted from Habitat June 2008. For the complete article and more, join our Archive >>

Boiler photo page one by Carol Ott