Rochdale Village, a 7,000 unit apartment complex located in Queens New York has its own power plant that provides electricity, chilled water, and steam for heat and hot water to all of it tenants. Several of the power plant’s boilers needed repairs that would require shutting down the complex’s steam supply.

Unfortunately, this large project needed to be performed in November, where evening temperatures could drop into the 30’s or 40’s. The residents of those 7,000 units would be left in freezing temperatures without heat and hot water if a carefully thought out plan was not enacted. Based on the time of year and the length of shutdown, a reliable temporary boiler solution would need to be installed.

Furthermore, space was an issue, with only a small parking lot available for the installation of rental equipment. Even worse, it did not even have access to onsite fuel tank, which meant that a large fuel tank would also need to fit into the already tight space.

Rochdale Village would need to come up with a temporary solution for the massive heat and hot water needs of the 25,000+ residents. Powerhouse was brought in to assess the temporary boiler needs, what was required for install and provide a robust solution for the project.

The temporary solution Powerhouse recommended involved installing a 75K PPH trailer mounted watertube boiler, a trailer mounted feed water system, and a 5,000 gallon fuel tank. The installation involved a crew from Powerhouse working long days to fit the equipment into the tight space, then connect both the fuel tank and the self-contained feed water system to the temporary watertube boiler.

Powerhouse installed all of the piping required to tie in the city water, condensate, blowdown drain, fuel tank and main steam line that ran through the Rochdale Power Plant, and to the main steam header that would eventually be converted to domestic and heating hot water for the entire complex.

Powerhouse was able to provide and quickly install a large boiler system that successfully maintained the steam demand to the entire apartment complex during the repair of the existing boiler system. Despite issues of space and access to fuel, we were able to quickly and smoothly implement a solution that met the customer’s needs.

Powerhouse’s rental boiler and team of experts allowed Rochdale’s contractors to stop worrying about the temporary steam needs and focus on the larger job at hand. Even more importantly, the 25,000+ residents of the Rochdale Village apartments were thankful that they didn’t have to worry about dependable heat and hot water.