A Missouri college called late last fall with a problem. Its heating system, a central campus heating water boiler plant with two pumped loops and three distribution branches, had developed a leak in the loop to the library building across the quad.

This month’s Facility File will focus on the B2B June test for the renovation of an office building located on a major corporation’s U.S. headquarters campus. The existing HVAC system to be replaced is an antiquated hot water heating system serving baseboard radiation, unit heaters, and a rooftop HVAC unit.

When Major League Soccer club the Real Salt Lake Monarchs embarked on building the largest pre-engineered, free-span facility in North America, a critical concern was efficiently heating the space during the cold Utah winter months.  

Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has a full-time student population of more than 10,000. Founded in 1910, the university moved to its current 118-acre suburban campus in 1970.

What are engineers making time to read?

Overby-Sheppard Elementary in Richmond, Virginia, needed more than an HVAC upgrade, but with tight budgets and minimal state funding, it didn’t seem likely. The 40-year-old building needed a full overhaul to provide students with a healthier, distraction-free environment.

This month’s Facility File will focus on the B2B April test for a K-8 school temporary heating project in sync with a utility rebate to furnish and install a new 120 boiler horsepower (BHP) condensing boiler application.

In 1973, an energy crisis led to the development of ASHRAE Standard 90. This event served as a catalyst for the creation of building design efficiency requirements, which eventually led to the creation of what is now known as the energy code for buildings.

This month’s Facility File focuses on the March Back2Basics retrofit of a campus-wide hot water boiler system covering 40 buildings with primary-, secondary-, and tertiary-pumping based on a performance lease agreement to retro-commission the system with a guaranteed operating savings. The university will hire an owner representative to work with a design-build-operate-maintain performance contractor (PC).

Boilers are closed pressure vessels that are used to heat fluids -- either water or steam. They range in size, fluid to be heated, temperature of fluid, and design configurations. This paper is the first in a series to explain total system efficiency with a focus on condensing hot water boilers used for space heating, process applications, and/ or domestic hot water heating.