Boiler Upgrade Helps Tacoma Art Museum Secure Grant, Cut Costs
Located about 30 minutes south of Seattle, Washington, the Tacoma Art Museum is one of the region’s premier art museums — showcasing regional work, French Impressionism, American Modernism and more. To ensure the protection and preservation of these works, the museum must maintain specific temperatures and humidity levels. Plus, at around 80,000 square feet, heating this building is no simple feat. After multiple expansions, the building now features a unique layout and two separate heating systems that accommodate that layout. With all of this in mind, the manufacturer's representative, CHC, and the installing contractors at West Coast Mechanical Solutions decided that two of Lochinvar’s Crest Condensing Boilers with Hellcat Combustion Technology would be the best fit.
One of the most important features of the Crest with Hellcat boilers is the O2 sensor, exclusively designed for a condensing, hydronic boiler, along with Lochinvar’s SMART TOUCH operating control. These features allow the unit to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, accounting for seasonal changes, shifts in weather patterns and altitude. The control platform records the optimal settings and logs that information, and when those same environmental conditions arise, the combustion system automatically adjusts.
“The team was impressed by the Crest with Hellcat boiler’s 20:1 turndown ratio, providing a higher efficiency in a smaller footprint than the previously installed units," said Brandon McCann, CHC sales engineer. Plus, having a boiler with additional pressure in the stack allowed for more intricate runs throughout the building’s unique layout. Heating systems are mission-critical at an art museum, so we needed to be able to switch them out as quickly as possible, and thanks to the unit’s user-friendly design, it was essentially just a drop-in replacement.”
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Tacoma Art Museum strives to minimize overhead costs wherever possible. The Crest with Hellcat boiler runs at 96.2% thermal efficiency, saving the museum money on utility bills. This high efficiency performance also helped the museum in securing a grant that significantly decreased the upfront costs associated with retrofitting the mechanical room.
“We partnered with a local nonprofit to help leverage the efficiency of the Crest with Hellcat equipment in a way that allowed us to successfully fund most of the project through the Frankenthaler Climate Foundation Grant,” said Tacoma Art Museum director of operations, Matt Daugherty. “What really made this grant possible for us was CHC’s help in selecting the Hellcat units. Not only did we decrease our upfront investment, but since installing the boilers, we have seen astronomical savings.”
So far, the Tacoma Art Museum has achieved savings of more than 10% thanks to the Crest with Hellcat boilers. This efficiency also supports the museum’s mission to become increasingly carbon-neutral. The Crest with Hellcat system has allowed the museum to reduce the overall setpoint to around 130°F. With this lower set point, the museum is using water more efficiently, saving money and energy — all while protecting the building’s artwork.
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