Solving a Correctional Facility’s Complex Water Heating Challenges

Correctional facilities operate under strict requirements to provide basic services. Hot water is certainly one of them. It’s constantly needed for showers, kitchens, laundry, medical areas, and other uses. When water heating equipment is close to end of life or fails, administrators are under pressure to fix it quickly. Recently,  a correctional facility in Pennsylvania was desperate to replace its 50-year-old water heater and they turned to Ace.

 

The Challenges

This project came with several unique challenges. Together, they added up to a level of complexity rarely seen in a retrofit engagement. Let’s look at each of these challenges, and how Ace teamed up with our customer to conquer them:

Fixed Budget – the facility already had a pre-approved limited budget based on an initial design they developed prior to engaging us. However, it quickly became clear the original plan wouldn’t be sufficient to meet the performance requirements. The solution needed to fit both the budget and the facility’s needs.

Tight Physical Footprint/Logistical Challenges – the original water heater was large and buried deep within the building, making it hard for equipment to be removed and replaced. Necessary structural demolition wasn’t in the budget and presented security risks. This limited the administration’s ability to have the existing unit swapped out with a comparable new similarly-sized solution.

Maintaining Performance – to add to the logistics challenges, while the situation only allowed for a smaller unit, performance metrics such as recovery rate could not be compromised. Whatever was installed had to deliver the same performance.

Restricted Site Access – it will come as no surprise that correctional facilities operate under strict security protocols. There’s no flexibility here, even for capital projects on tight deadlines. This means every tool brought on site had to be checked in, then later checked out. Each of our technicians had to pass through a full security screening when entering and exiting the facility. All of this added up to lost time. In fact, a typical 8-hour day yielded just a few hours of hands-on time to get the installation done.

 

Our Solution

While a fully customized water heating solution would have met these challenges it would have taken more time, and wasn’t in the budget. So our engineering team modified one of our proven standard tank designs, the Mega Pack Packaged Storage Water Heater, to balance the facility’s budget and logistics constraints with performance requirements.

The key to the design was reconfiguring tank geometry to what we call a “hamburger style”. It’s a short, squat tank with elliptical heads. This allowed the tanks to be transported throughout the facility to the boiler room. To meet the exchange rate demands, a larger heat exchanger was paired with the tank.

Ace’s engineering team also reworked the control panel placement to align with the existing electrical supply. This eliminated the need for additional junction boxes or added on-site electrical work. Doing this helped keep the job within budget.

As for the site-access challenge, the engineering and installation teams collaborated to shift as much of the on-site assembly work to Ace’s factory floor. This reduced the time and tools needed to complete the installation.

 

Conclusion

For correctional facilities, failure to provide basic services such as hot water can be a high stakes issue. In this case, the challenges of a fixed budget, tight working spaces, and access limitations further increased the stakes. This engagement does exemplify the types of challenges we often resolve with retrofit projects. While most other commercial water heater manufacturers can do little more than offer a standard product, Ace was able to provide an innovative solution, supported by expert engineering and flexible manufacturing processes. For this facility, these differentiators meant hot water was restored quickly, without the costs, delays, and disruption of a full custom solution.