Miller Proctor Nickolas (MPN) was contacted by Rivervue Tuckahoe Condominiums, a residential building in Tuckahoe, New York, in March 2020 after the property began having problems with its Raypak heating boilers.
Background
MPN visited the facility to assess the issues firsthand, interviewing members of the condominium board and completing a full audit of the boiler room equipment. The audit found that several pieces of equipment were not functioning properly. One of the two boilers had reached the end of its service life after more than 20 years in operation, and the mechanical draft-inducing system needed upgrading. Further investigation also revealed that the boiler room had no lead-lag system in place at all, meaning the boilers were running without a smart master controller to coordinate their operation.
Our Approach
MPN put together a heating plan built around replacing the failing boiler and modernizing the equipment around it. Because Rivervue’s original boiler required an identical replacement to match existing specifications, MPN — the authorized Raypak representative for New York City — custom-ordered a matching unit: a Raypak 3-million BTU naturally vented boiler, a model Raypak has manufactured for more than 30 years. The old unit was removed and replaced with the new boiler, which looks virtually identical to the 22-year-old unit it replaced but now runs on a far more capable control system, giving the building supervisor a digital readout of inlet and outlet temperatures, remote monitoring, and a remote alarm if anything goes wrong.
Alongside the new boiler, MPN installed a Raypak TempTracker lead-lag control system, which reads the system’s header temperature and supplies exactly the heat needed to maintain the required loop temperature. Rivervue is a heat pump building, so these boilers are used to inject supplemental heat into the heat pump loop rather than heat the building on their own. Previously, the team could only maintain a header temperature of around 80 degrees with conventional controls; the new system allows for higher, more consistent temperatures while still injecting the required heat into the loop.
MPN also addressed the building’s natural-draft venting. Because Rivervue’s flue routing is unusually long with only a short vertical chimney, the original 22-year-old installation relied on a mechanical draft inducer — but it ran at constant speed with no ability to save energy. MPN upgraded the system with a variable-speed draft control system that adjusts fan speed to maintain the required draft, cutting electricity use significantly, and interlocked the new fans with the boilers so they only run when the appliances are running.
Finally, MPN installed a carbon monoxide and gas detection system in the boiler room, automatically shutting the equipment down in the event of a gas leak or CO buildup — a meaningful safety upgrade for building occupants.
The Outcome
The result is an all-in-one heating solution that gives Rivervue Tuckahoe Condominiums better, safer heat and a boiler room the building supervisor can run from a single location. Rather than monitoring each piece of equipment separately, the operator can now turn the boilers on and off, and check system status, from one central point, with full digital visibility into temperatures and remote alarms if something needs attention.
Rivervue is located in Tuckahoe, within Westchester County, where MPN is headquartered. See more of MPN’s completed projects in our boiler case studies.