21st-century Solution
Miller set forth his mission to move the campus’ buildings off steam heat the year he came to Cornell. Three residence halls already were heated via individual gas-fired boilers rather than connected to the central heating plant. This solution was working well and Miller intended to replicate it throughout the buildings on campus. However, when one of the individual boilers’ heat exchangers went out, Miller learned it would take three months to receive a new part from the overseas manufacturer and that was only after the manufacturer confirmed the boiler still was under warranty, which could take days, even weeks.
“We had one boiler and no redundancy. If we lost that boiler, we would be without heat to the building,” Miller recalls. “We were not willing to have a pipe freeze, burst and possibly hurt a student.”
Miller began researching other natural gas-fired boiler systems for the campus-wide upgrade. One system, with which Miller was familiar from previous projects he had completed in his career, ended up being the solution he proposed to Cornell’s president and board of trustees. Not only was pricing competitive, but the chosen boilers could be maintained by Cornell’s facilities staff after some training by the Midwest-based manufacturer. In addition, Cornell staff could retrieve parts for the boilers from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, (17 miles northwest of Mount Vernon) and Iowa City (22 miles south). Finally, the small-footprint boilers are available in up to 1.5 million Btu in sizes that fit through a standard door, as well as into smaller spaces. This was very important to Miller as he tucked the boilers into locations that held old steam converters in the campus buildings.
“We now have five boilers where one wire steam exchanger was in Olin Hall [a 46,000-square-foot residence hall that houses 200 students],” Miller says. “Those five boilers take care of Olin’s domestic hot water and heat in the same footprint.”
Another benefit of the chosen boilers is they connect directly to the campus’ new building automation system. Cornell has a fiber-optic connection to every building, which made implementation of the BAS easy. “Before we couldn’t log in from home, but Jeff Mick [assistant director of Facilities Services] and I get all the alarms on our phones now,” Miller states.“We know when a building, exhaust fan or air handler is down. We know when any building has a fire alarm. We can monitor everything.”
If a student calls the maintenance department and says his or her room is 58 F, anyone in the department can look at the BAS and see the actual room temperature in real-time. Currently, Miller has set some buildings to global temperature settings and others are set globally per floor. He explains: “With Cornell’s last renovations, we found out that nature plays a big part in the comfort of a building. For example, there’s a north side of a building and a south side of a building. Both sides are relative to the sun and wind. It took fine-tuning to ensure students in all buildings are comfortable.”
A Warm, Safe and Dry Legacy
It’s a slow process to convert the heating systems of each building, especially when many buildings on campus didn’t have gas lines running to them. Today, Cornell only has seven of about 60 buildings remaining on steam heat, which Miller anticipates will change in the near future. As the upgrades are made, Miller is focused on retrofitting each building for maximum energy efficiency. Four years ago, Miller and his team worked with the local utility, Alliant Energy in Cedar Rapids, to conduct an energy audit on every campus building.
“The audits told us what was happening with all of the buildings. The last two pages of the report told us what we could do to make the building more energy efficient. It was an easy decision to move forward with many of the recommendations,” Miller explains. “In fact, the reports included paybacks. If it’s five to eight years, OK. We’ll go to the board of trustees and we’ll work on our capital plan. If it’s less than three years, we’re going to do it in our budget because we’re going to save that much money in three years in the facilities operation budget. The money we save buying LED light bulbs allows us to buy more LED bulbs or better insulation or better controls.”
It’s not all about the cost savings to Miller, however. He likes making students and their parents happy. “These kids are the same age as my kids, and we want to be sure that mom and dad don’t have to worry about the heating and cooling in their kids’ residence hall along with everything else,” Miller says. “We want these kids to remember just as many good stories and memories in their room at Cornell College as they had in their room at home. We don’t want them to ever remember being cold or water pipes breaking. Warm, safe and dry. I hope that’s our legacy here.”
Retrofit Team
Boiler Installer: Pipe Pro Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Materials
Building Automation System: Niagara Framework by Schneider Electric
Standalone Boilers: Ultra 550 MBH high-efficiency condensing gas boilers and SlimFit 750 series by Weil-McLain
PHOTOS: Cornell College, unless otherwise noted