Considering the massive population of a highly developed planet as well as the widespread presence of online shopping among American consumers, it’s no surprise that shipment facilities are known to be hectic, where the nonstop work can be crippled by any delay. One such facility in Boston faced potential disaster when their water cooling system broke down the weekend after Independence Day. Their chiller system consisted of two distinct halves. One half of newly installed chillers that were not yet ready for use, and the other half was a chiller from 1975 that was on its last breath. When the old chiller broke down, the facility called American Spot Cooling & Power Rental for emergency service, and a representative arrived on site Sunday morning.
The representative determined that the old chiller had about 800 tons of cooling power, and then presented an engineered solution to the facility. With a 4:00pm approval of the rental agreement, the equipment was delivered by 6:30pm. Because of the immediate demand for cooling, four nearby 200-ton chillers were used, as opposed to waiting for a larger unit from other branches around the country. Otherwise, hundreds of employees would risk overheating at work and the facility would face a shutdown until cooling was restored. The permanent chiller system used 13,000 volts, so rental generators were also supplied to power the rental chillers. A 1000 kW unit and a 500 kW unit thus accompanied the chillers, and the equipment was installed overnight; within 12 hours of delivery the temporary cooling system was up and running.
Three technicians, a service manager, and an operations manager facilitated the install. They made sure to take extra safety precautions on the job, such as craning equipment and running 1000 feet of hose to the rooftop mechanical room. A mechanical contractor was then hired to remove the piping from the broken chiller, then to tie in the rental chillers to the system. After the installation was complete a technician made daily onsite inspections of temperature and liquid flow, until the facility could finish installing their new permanent system. Once the new chillers ran without fail for 24 hours, American Spot Cooling and Power Rental was able to pull out their temporary cooling and power equipment.
By Sebastian Kopacz