Shoreline Community College (SCC) is located 10 miles north of downtown Seattle. This beautiful 83-acre campus is nestled among native evergreens, and its 26 buildings are often surrounded by dazzling color when the gardens of flowering plants are in bloom. This part of the country is known for its recreational and cultural opportunities, as well as its institutions of higher learning.
While the beautiful grounds of SCC are truly unique, the issues of deferred maintenance and improper system design are all too similar to other colleges around the country. By 2003, over 40% of SCC's boilers had completely failed or burned out. Contributing to the problem were small boiler rooms plus clogged ventilation and combustion air louvers, which caused the boilers to suffer from incomplete combustion, flame roll-out, overheat, and flame impingement conditions.