Utah schools medal in minimizing maintenance

Engineered Systems, March, 2002 by Joanna R. Turpin

For the Granite School District, the move to multiple-boiler systems led to solid, more consistent performance for schools of various ages. Inside the district's energy manager discusses the move to cast iron boilers as well as other sequencing and upkeep issues.

Granite School District in Salt Lake City is one of the largest school districts in the state. With 90 schools already in existence and more on the way, the district's engineering department is always looking for ways to trim the annual utility bill.

When the energy management coordinator, Bill McLeod, came on board about 11 years ago, he was particularly interested in looking at how the mechanical systems might be retooled in order to save some money. During his examinations, he found that not enough attention or money was being applied to the systems' maintenance and repair, and many systems were not operating in peak condition. This was particularly true where the boilers were concerned.

As it turned out, the existing firetube boilers needed a large amount of maintenance. Every year the district was shelling out between $50,000 and $100,000 for tube replacements, tube sheet repairs, and other boiler repairs. McLeod decided something needed to be done. In addition to wanting to save the money being spent on annual repairs, he wanted equipment that required less maintenance and was more efficient than the existing boilers.

He found his answer in cast iron boilers for both his steam and hot water applications. And instead of installing one or two large boilers per school, he prefers to have multiple smaller boilers installed. This arrangement, he says, reduces maintenance and lowers energy costs, which makes this engineer - and the school district - extremely happy.

COMING FROM THE OUTSIDE

Eleven years ago, Bill McLeod was not only new to the Granite School District, he was new to the educational system in general. He had been a consulting mechanical engineer for 30 years prior to coming to the school district. During those years he designed a lot of mechanical and plumbing systems for new and existing schools, and it became obvious to him that schools often didn't take into account the life cycle replacement costs of mechanical systems. In addition, many school district personnel didn't understand mechanical systems and, as a result, didn't allocate adequate money for equipment replacement, upkeep, or maintenance.

"During my 30 years as a consulting engineer, most school districts I saw had terrible mechanical systems because not enough attention or money was being applied to their maintenance and repair. As a result, I decided to see what I could do to help one of the larger school districts in the state, so I came to work here at Granite as their mechanical engineer and energy management coordinator," says McLeod.

As McLeod started looking at the conditions of the older schools in the district, he noticed that the mechanical systems were in pretty bad shape. Numerous problems were reported with the boilers, which numbered approximately 243 (mostly firetube steam) in 90 schools and other district buildings. Many of those boilers were in need of repair.

Then an interesting thing happened. McLeod noticed that the oldest boiler in the district, which was installed in 1908, was a cast iron boiler. And it was still operating. "I thought that was really cool. Why the longevity of that son of a gun? I talked to some of our maintenance people and I asked how it had been, and they said they hadn't touched it. It had an old gravity-type burner, and it just had gone on forever. That was interesting," says McLeod.

Looking at that old cast iron boiler, McLeod thought maybe that was the direction to go. So a bid was put out in 1992 for the first school in the district to receive cast iron boilers. Sabol and Rice, also of Salt Lake City, was awarded the contract, and the first Weil-McLain cast iron boilers were installed in the Granite School District.

CAST IRON EASIER TO INSTALL

No one was happier about Granite's choice of cast iron boilers than Steve Montgomery, sales engineer, Sabol and Rice. "Most engineers seem to be stuck on watertube boilers and firetube boilers, because they think they're more flexible. Engineers also have this misconception that cast iron is brittle and susceptible to cold shocking, which makes them crack. That's totally false," says Montgomery.

Montgomery adds that cast iron boilers usually only go bad if they're filled with scale, then they will crack. "But scale will ruin every boiler. Cast iron is quite a good material to use for heating. Boilers heat and cool, and about the only thing that does that much heating and cooling in a day would probably be a car engine. And they make those out of cast iron, too," notes Montgomery.

McLeod indicated that initially the maintenance staff wasn't too excited about having cast iron boilers installed. He says that in recent years, some of the boiler maintenance personnel have said to him, "You know when you first started going in the direction of cast iron, we thought you were crazy. But now that we've got quite a number of them in the district, we've realized how much it's helped our maintenance problems, and we realize how much it's cut down on our outside repair costs." That positive reaction has been one of the highlights of this project, notes McLeod.