This case study was written by Jack McTigue, an insulation expert at Thermaxx Jackets
Alex Birmelin of Bettina Equities asked Thermaxx Jackets to identify insulation needs at two of his New York residential buildings; 105 and 151 Lexington Ave. Both Buildings were using a gas boiler for both heating and hot water. As a result of using a gas boiler, Bettina was incentive eligible through the Con Edison Multi-Family Program through Willdan.
Thermaxx has worked for many years with Con Edison’s Commercial & Industrial (C&I) program and thought this would be a similar process, but just like with anything new there are different challenges and requirements. As the saying goes “there are many ways to skin a cat.”
Not only did we provide the engineering calculations on insulation savings, but we had to create a story…from the story of the client, embed 3e plus, and heat loss on to document and get history of the mechanical equipment and room. It was a fun and challenging experience. If anything it helped lead to our company motto become better.
The one thing that stayed the same was the actual incentive, which is $2 per therm up to 50% of the project cost.
The client had two boiler rooms that needed insulation to make it safer along with cooler in the boiler room. Plus, they were losing 9k and 5k in the two buildings due to needed insulation. Alex from Bettina can see the purpose of not only hard insulation, but the benefits of removable insulation for the components that need to be serviced. For example, Front, back and mud drum of boiler!
After project completion, the two Bettina properties will have a return of investment of 12 months and 5 months.
105 Lexington Ave
105 Lexington Ave was built in 1988 and has 10 floors with 52 apartments. The boiler room is in pretty good condition and a new gas boiler was installed in 2003. The boiler room includes a boiler, heat exchanger, piping and condensate tank.
- Yearly Savings $9,136
- Total Insulation Cost Removable/Hard $18,303
- Incentive through Con Edison’s Multi-Family Program $8718
- Payback in Month including Incentive – 12 Months/1 Year
151 Lexington Ave
151 Lexington Ave was built in 1981 and has 12 floors with 52 apartments. The boiler room is very clean and new gas boiler was installed in 2005. The boiler room includes a boiler, heat exchanger, piping and age of equipment.
- Yearly Savings – $11,377
- Total Insulation Cost Removable/Hard $10,049
- Incentive through Con Edison’s Multi-Family Program $5,024
- Payback in Months including Incentive – 5 Months
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Conclusion
As a result of working with Willdan, we were able to introduce our new Measure & Verification technology to prove the calculations provided in our heat loss findings. Thermaxx’s Smart Sensors monitor the insulation savings. There is no extra cost for the monitoring for measure and verification purposes. We will provide the sensors, gateway, reports and on-line portal for free for up to 1 year for free. This way, you can take your yearly savings and pro rate over the warranty of the Thermaxx Jackets for 5 years.
Smart Sensors is a non-invasive technology that puts the savings information digitally into the cloud. The sensors sit on top of the insulation, which contains high temperature thermocouples that sends the information wirelessly to the Internet. The thermocouples take three temperatures to calculate savings; pipe temperature, touch temp of jacket/insulation and ambien. The temperatures are taken every 15 minutes and sent to your portal. The Smart Sensors are placed in various locations driven by the different pipe temperatures, pipe size and size of work area. These calculations are populated daily and an energy savings report is emailed to the building owner monthly showing him exactly how much the pipe insulation is saving. This information can be viewed on a dashboard or emailed at a specified daily, weekly or monthly occurrence.
Below is a screenshot of the portal:
For more information on Thermaxx Jackets, contact us!
