The first and last time we had been on this large country club, golf course and housing development, it was owned by a nefarious character that was a known cheat. Contractors had a hard time getting paid, if at all, and they wanted a second opinion on the clubhouse boiler. Our contracts have a clause that grants us the right to charge 2 percent per month interest on any past due amount as well as incorporate all lawyer fees and court costs if collection becomes necessary. (Apparently the owners did not read that clause.)
We did confirm the boiler was beyond repair and, as requested, provided an estimate for its replacement with three high-efficiency modcon boilers. When the payment from the Florida-based owner was late, I emailed the owner and included the contract with the clause highlighted. She asked for more time. I gave her 24 hours to FedEx a check or the lawyers would be unleashed. We had the check the next day.
Two years later, I received a phone call from a gentleman interested in purchasing the entire country club complex. The Florida owner was embroiled in lawsuits and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. A Florida judge had removed the owner from legally doing anything financially with the estate. The employees had not been paid and all had, at the same time, simply walked out the doors. Our first site visit was like being the last two people alive while everyone else had simply vanished.
In the golf pro shop, the cash registers and computers were all on and all merchandise was on display. Candy for sale sat untouched on the sales counter. The forced hot air was on and running. Next door, in the restaurant, all of the kitchen equipment was running. Gas pilots were on to multiple pieces of fryers, grills and multi-burner stoves and ovens. Here too, the HVAC systems were running. One walk-in cooler housed case upon cases of beer and wine with multiple bottles of uncorked wine — queued up in anticipation of the next by-the-glass order.
The visitors’ center had no heat. A GlowCore boiler in the mechanical room was turned off and had been drained. As soon as the water-feeder was turned on, you could hear the heat exchanger spraying water and it didn’t take long for water to flood the combustion air intake filter housing. Well, that explained why the old air filter canister was sitting on top of the boiler! No outdoor reset had been connected, so the boiler was as dumb as a box of rocks. A number of broken igniters indicated the issue many of us experienced with GlowCore boilers: they ate igniters like a kid eating candy on Halloween!
We replaced the boiler with a new NTI Trinity Fire Tube boiler sized to the building’s heat loss and added the outdoor reset. No need to run the outlet water temperature above 140°F, which allows return water temperatures low enough to be in condensing mode for maintaining peak operating efficiency. The reset curve was given a range of 100°F to 140°F. With its on-board Boost feature, the TFT will automatically ramp up the water temperature to the programmed maximum we allow if, and only if, space temperature cannot rise to meet the thermostat setting. Boost, a feature found on many modcon boilers, allows you to program a more aggressive reset curve with no fear of an angry middle-of-the-night call from a cold customer.
While still owned by the Florida individual, a bitter cold spell settled in. A convector on the third floor of the clubhouse mansion froze and ice expansion split the coil. On the next sunny day, this south-facing room received enough solar heat gain to thaw the convector. The boiler’s water-feeder did its job by recognizing the loss of pressure and began adding water to the system. How long this ran was unknown due to the mansion being unoccupied. Water raining down through all three floors, and then into the basement mechanical room eventually shorted out the fire alarm system. We responded in the middle of the night, but could not enter the mechanical room due to the water literally raining down onto all of the mechanical equipment and controls, many of which were three phase. The building’s water and gas were disabled for the night.
The next day, we bypassed the third floor convector, dried out the controls, and restored the heat. A single Lochinvar boiler had replaced the old boiler we’d given a second opinion on. Once again, no outdoor reset in spite of the fact that the Lochinvar incorporates outdoor reset if you choose to use that to lower your customers operating costs. What we discovered during this restoration process was that this four-pipe hydronic hot/chilled water system wasn’t just blind to outdoor temperatures, there was no communication from the occupied areas: the boiler and chiller were manual ON/OFF and ran 24/7 while circulating hot water and/or chilled water via large base-mounted multi-horsepower pumps 24/7. Upstairs at the dozens of fan/coil units, each was equipped with zone valves to divert heated or chilled water through their coils. Wall mounted thermostats communicated only with the individual convectors. This system was literally an energy hog — made so by being dumber than a box of rocks.
Happy ending: we’re in the process of giving this mansion’s mechanical systems a fully functioning autonomous brain and upgrade in operating efficiency.
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