ABOUT UC DAVIS
Founded in 1908, the University of California, Davis, is a public land-grant research university. Much of its research relies upon boiler equipment.
The Kenneth L. Maddy Laboratory, located on the UC Davis campus, processes thousands of samples every day to ensure the health and safety of animals from around the state, including performance horses and livestock.
PROBLEM – AGING BOILERS PUT THE OPERATION AT RISK
Aging boilers responsible for producing hot water within a strict temperature band were beginning to experience costly failures. In addition to addressing the poor reliability, the University saw an opportunity to reduce operating costs and the facility’s environmental footprint by migrating to modern, more efficient boiler systems.
SOLUTION – INSTALL NEW EQUIPMENT WHILE MINIMIZING DOWNTIME
As a trusted provider to UC Davis, Bay City Boiler was called upon to develop a solution that would improve reliability and reduce operating expenses while minimizing costly downtime.
Elements of the solution:
- Two 800,000 BTU/Hr condensing boilers from Raypak capable of operating at 96.5% efficiency
- Modified piping for new boilers and necessary connections for a rental boiler to be deployed so downtime would be minimized
- One 999,000 BTU/HR boiler from our rental fleet to operate for 2 weeks while the new boilers were installed
RESULT – MAXIMUM UPTIME & LOWER COSTS
The project proceeded on schedule, with the facility only offline for about 2 hours during the switchover to the rental systems and another 2 hours during the switch to the newly-installed Raypak boilers.
“The whole project moved along smoothly. The communication from the Bay City Boiler team was great– keeping us informed about the schedule and steps to expect. Not only are we up and running with the new systems after minimal downtime, but now we have the connections in place to quickly hook up rental boilers should we ever need to. We are very pleased with the result,” explained James Thornton, Facility Manager.
