Building Reliability and Efficiency: Steam Decentralization Plan Guarantees $322,000 Annual Savings at Queens University of Charlotte

February 13, 2025

Queens University of Charlotte’s roots began in 1857, when the school was founded as the Charlotte Female Institute. Over the years, it evolved into a Seminary for Girls, then the Presbyterian Female College, and eventually into Queens College in 1912, when the college was moved to its current location in Myers Park. The growth didn’t stop there – Queens became fully coed in the late 1980s and adopted the current name, Queens University of Charlotte, in 2002.

Queens is a perfect example of growth and progress. Today, the university offers 51 majors, 66 minors and 35 graduate programs to educate and inspire the next generation of leaders. In 2019, SSC Services for Education became the facilities management partner of Queens University of Charlotte.

At the beginning of the partnership, the SSC facilities maintenance team did a facility condition assessment (FCA) and quickly found, to match the vision of growth and progress for the university, significant upgrades were required to the HVAC and steam plant.

Before: The Old Steam Plant at Queens University of Charlotte

Findings for the Old Steam Plant

Facility Condition Assessment

In 2019, the Queens University steam plant housed five fire tube boilers. Dates of manufacture ranged from 1916 to 1983.
Boilers 1 and 2 were coal-fired, and Boiler 3 was fuel oil-fired. All three boilers were decommissioned. Boilers 4 and 5 were natural gas-fired. Boiler 5 was also decommissioned, and the university relied on one final boiler to service the entire campus: Boiler 4.
SSC advised a temporary boiler, Boiler 6, be commissioned and placed beside the steam plant. This allowed for redundancy and reliability; if Boiler 4 were to go down because of its condition, Boiler 6 would keep operations moving. While necessary, this was an extremely costly temporary measure.
Legacy piping, unlabeled piping and valves, poor access and lighting, and presumed asbestos containing materials created challenges in training new employees and for mechanical contractors new to the site.

Aged Underground Piping at Queens University of Charlotte

Practical Implications

Because of aged underground piping, some of the steam and much of the condensate never returned to the thermal plant. As a result, so much makeup water had to reach the thermal plant, resulting in increased chemical treatment costs that were unsustainable, more boiler degradation, and overall increased costs for Queens.
Accumulation of water on the floors was commonplace, requiring the team to create paths out of pallets and wear rubber boots to access certain points of the steam plant.
Steam leaks on cold days made it nearly impossible to see inside the mechanical rooms.
Because the heat was leaking outside the steam plant, many plant varieties nearby the building were also unable to grow.

Creating and Communicating an Action Plan: Partnering with CMTA for Standardization and Uniformity in Equipment

After the initial evaluation of the HVAC and steam plant, the next step in moving the partnership forward was creating a plan for upgrades. These upgrades would not only significantly improve building conditions, but also meet the financial needs of the university.

Through our partnership with CMTA, we were able to make significant updates to modernize the campus. SSC assisted CMTA with an upgrade plan that addressed the initial improvements to systems and created a path forward for continued planned maintenance to ensure the new systems would operate well for many years to come.

SSC installed two new boilers: a Fulton Endura Ultra-High Efficiency Condensing Boiler and Lochinvar Shield DHWBs. SSC also made additional enhancements to both equipment and processes, including:

Elimination of high-temperature steam pressure vessels and piping, resulting in the elimination of considerable controlled risk.
Standardization of operational processes to shift workload from reactive maintenance to planned and preventative maintenance
Installation of standardized equipment, including temperature gauges, pressure gauges, line identification, valve identification, isolation valves, variable frequency drive motors and pumps, automated mixing valves, programmed BAS controls, and improved lighting.

Maintenance Manager Shawn Brown outlined additional benefits realized, particularly from standardizing equipment and establishing an ongoing service contract with the outfits that installed them:

“As equipment is designed for greater and greater efficiency, the service technicians require a higher degree of technical capability. Manufacturers can threaten to void warranties unless their units are serviced by factory-trained personnel. It made good sense to establish our service contract with the outfit that installed them, particularly with the quality work we’ve observed.”

Costs and Benefits: An Investment with Outstanding Return

With old, outdated facilities, there is an initial reactive maintenance challenge that presents significant cost – which is understandably intimidating. The good news is, beyond the initial replacement costs, there is a significant reduction in planned maintenance cost for years to come that more than makes up for the initial investment.

Facilities Director Joel Phelps’ enthusiasm for the project was unmistakable.

“The never-ending repair and maintenance associated with continual steam line repair, abatement, rental boiler, cold calls, trenching, and unachievable water treatment was exhausting and led to numerous employee burnouts and high turnover. Then, rehiring and retraining.

Now, SSC is on the other side of things – we perform scheduled PMs on time and keep our mechanical rooms clean and well organized. We even have shrubs and grasses growing in flower beds, which previously were so hot from steam leakage that nothing could grow.”

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