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Posted by Steve on January 29, 2002 at 05:30:24:
In Reply to: Re: Anyone else concerned posted by Tom Stanton on January 27, 2002 at 09:06:35:
Actually I was meaning taking 5ft squareper boiler horsepower heating surface boilers and replacing them with 3.5ft square boilers. The way the do it here is they end up with same horsepower but our boilers branch bases plant size on the 5 square foot rule so even though they still have the same btu input on paper the plant is smaller. The derating of boilers to get around the requirements also concerns me.
: Are you talking about high pressure steam boilers (greater than 15 psi), where facilities are going to a lesser heating surface boiler there-by reducing boiler HP to get around license laws?
: If so, I see this frequently in Massachusetts, especially in hospital plants. Because of the licensing structure in Mass, some hospitals are re-rating the big scotch boilers to low pressure and using them strictly for domestic heat, and they bring in small vertical boilers (less than 9 HP) like fulton and columbia to give the required pressure and temps for autoclaves etc. I know one hospital that brought in 7 - 8.7HP boilers to handle the load. In Mass, if you have individual high pressure boilers rated at less than 9HP you do not need a licensed engineer to operte them. As in inspector, I do have concern, but I have not seen any boilers abused yet. Personally, I believe all boilers, HP and LP should have operators with some knowledge, but as we all know the $$$$ controls those decisions.