It began with one of the many boiler seminars put on in Pittsburgh, PA. In the audience was Dan Judy, Facility Manager for Alderson-Broaddus College located in Philippi, WV.
Alderson-Broaddus was formed from a merger of Broaddus College, founded in 1871, and Alderson Academy, founded in 1901. It has been providing liberal arts education to students for over 130 years and has a well-deserved reputation as a first-class health-related and professional educational institution.
The school was suffering from the inefficiency and high maintenance costs of its old cast iron sectional boilers. They were also sooting badly, requiring frequent cleanings. Because several of the buildings had only one boiler that was at risk of going down, each building was in danger of losing heat and requiring that the students be moved to a new location.
The seminar explained the principals and advantages of a primary-secondary system as offered by Superior Boiler’s Triads. After the training concluded, Mr. Judy requested more detail about how this system could help solve his energy and maintenance problems. After talking to and visiting owners of several other Triad installations in the area, he decided to install a few Triad boilers in one building.
According to Mr. Judy, “The results were better than expected. The fuel savings were astonishing, and we went from mandatory monthly cleanings to boilers that did their job with barely any attention at all. I especially like the fact that with Triads there are no proprietary parts, and because they are modular boilers, the non-firing vessels provide back-up, so we never have to worry about going off-line”.
The installation list to date is impressive: Four 900’s in one residence hall beginning in 1995 followed up by six 900’s in the coliseum, four in another residence hall, and twenty-seven more 300’s installed throughout the rest of the campus in 2001, resulting in a total of 41!
Because many buildings were involved, the college was able to install the boilers gradually over time, or when funding was available. Installation was very simple because the boilers came with all the controls and the circulating pump mounted and fully wired.
There was no need to put cast iron sections together, which also means that pressure testing each boiler onsite was unnecessary, because all Triad boilers are pressure tested at the factory.