News Articles

The first call relating to a possible problem with steam boiler #1 came in to our service at 6:17 AM. The message was delivered to our staff at 6:44 AM. We had people investigating this trouble before 8:30 AM and Rich Ellis called me to confirm identification of the ‘general’ trouble at 9:14 AM. He had already spoken with Scott Bailey whose assistance he required to find the specific fault. The fire controller was without electrical power. This fault trips a safety interlock and the system shuts down. (There are many such safety interlocks to the system – when operating correctly.) The controller was without power because the blower impeller (fan) suffered a structural failure and was destroyed while in service. This locked up the blower motor which in turn tripped a circuit breaker. With no power to the fire controller the system shut down. We cannibalized the impeller from steam boiler #2 blower fan, installed it in steam boiler #1 blower fan and restored steam boiler #1 to full service at about 1:30 PM. We will be charged for about four hours of Scott Bailey’s time; $500. I have little doubt this little project would easily run us into the thousands of dollars if we had been required to contact Dominion Mechanical or Capital Boiler Works. I believe we saved $1,500 to $3,000 and took four to six hours off of the repair time by working the job in-house. -- Bill Myers