Warren decentralizes heating

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Brandon Valle
  • 90th Missile Wing Public Affairs
F.E. WARREN AIR FORCE BASE, Wyo. --  The 90th Civil Engineer Squadron and a local contractor have been working together to decentralize the heating on base since June 2013, and the work is coming to a close this summer.

"The boilers in the central heating plant were operating at 83 percent measured efficiency, and it was estimated that half of the heat produced in the plant was lost in transmission to the buildings," said Paul Wise, 90th CES plant decentralization project engineer. "Total energy losses in the heat plant boilers and distribution system were estimated at 50 percent."

The original central heating plant was commissioned in 1981 and provided heat to 1.8 million square feet of Warren's facilities. The Central Heat Plant Decentralization Project aims to remove the base's need for a central heating plant, focusing on each building having its own heat supply.

The project is funded under the fiscal 2013 Energy Conservation Investment Program. ECIP is a subset of the Department of Defense-wide military construction program, a program designed to fund projects that save energy or water, produce energy or generally reduce the DOD's energy costs. ECIP supports construction of new, high-efficiency energy systems and the improvement and modernization of existing ones.

"The objectives of the project were to replace aging infrastructure that was becoming unserviceable and improve efficiency of the base heating systems to realize an environmental and cost savings," said Richard Blackwell, Firewatch Contracting superintendent and one of the project managers.

The project began with the installations of 81 boilers and heaters as well as removing the buildings from the central heating plant system. The heat plant decentralization and individual boiler installation were completed in September of 2014.

The drop of the first half of the building structure is scheduled to occur on Mar. 27 or 28, 2015, and the second half will be pulled a few weeks later. The complete removal is scheduled to be finished by July 15, 2015.