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Originally Posted by BaldLoonie

Did the old towers have 1 plant for both?

Mark Beiser saw the main chilled water plant for Indy's district cooling. I forgot what all he said was in there. The system has 2 more elsewhere.

I missed that tour by just a few hours...was on a plane flying into Indy when the tour went down. Sure wish I could have made it in earlier!

My plant (660 tons) definitely won't count as large among the big boys I've seen and heard about, but it's my baby and can run with the best of 'em!

Boeing has 90 wheels!

KU has 23

KC trigen had two 9,000tr york titans

KU MED had 9 wheels.

Biggest one i ever tore down was 1600tr.


Smallest was a 90 tr sidewinder!

when i was really new to ac i was doing a residential ac maintenance. i was talking to this homeowners neighbor explaining how stuff worked and stuff. i got the feeling he knew a little bit more than he was telling me. after some prying questions he told me he was an engineer. he also told me he had a role in the design of the trade center cooling plant. I dont know if he was for real but nonetheless kinda cool.

I thought I'd submit this plant for the group to explore - not only is it impressive, especially since it's use is pivotal to the population of an entire manmade island, but it is, i must say, one of the best LOOKING chiller plants I've ever seen (pictures of). Qatar Cool on The Pearl, Qatar.
google map: http://maps.google.com/?q=25.3722,51.552679
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23 PAIRS of 2500 ton chillers (I believe the run the pairs in series), resulting in 125,000 nominal tons of cooling. If I'm ever in that part of the world, I've GOT to figure out a way to arrange a tour of this masterpiece... The plant has it's own desalination plant just for the tower make-up water...

Location: Houston Texas, Texas Medical Center. It is operated by TECO, it is a central cooling, steam and emergency power generation plant serving the Texas Medical Center I believe they are over 49,000 tons combined tonnage. There are 2 60 inch chill water supply lines leaving the main plant serving a lrge prtion of the Texas Medical Center. TECO has another plant serving other portions of the medical center.

Most class a offices towers seem to use electric heat strips these days. Are there any newer office properties, which have a boiler heating plant??? Any examples would be appreciated!!

Originally Posted by partime59

capitol power plant feeding capitol hill has 12 6k yorks running around 2 36"lines on a five mile loop. the old coal boilers quit burning coal when sen byrd died,, interesting set up from the old days,,

Are they still using the cooling towers that can be seen from the freeway? Steam still being used?

capitol power plant feeding capitol hill has 12 6k yorks running around 2 36"lines on a five mile loop. the old coal boilers quit burning coal when sen byrd died,, interesting set up from the old days,,

Originally Posted by flange

close, but no cigar. that assumes a deck to deck of ten feet, where most were looser to thirteen to accomodate mechanicals, I am told. would be a wee bit more, likely enough to drill your teeth anyway.

Ok, 110 floors, 13ft from deck to deck.

619psi.

It would probably hurt your gums.

close, but no cigar. that assumes a deck to deck of ten feet, where most were looser to thirteen to accomodate mechanicals, I am told. would be a wee bit more, likely enough to drill your teeth anyway.

Originally Posted by DeltaT

I never really had a reason to think about this particular engineering until the World Trade Centers were presented to us in a math form by this engineer when he calculated the pressure that would be on the bottom of a water line that would be 100 plus stories high.

Pffffttt... It would only be a measly 433psi.

Who couldn't handle that out of a drinking fountain?

I never really had a reason to think about this particular engineering until the World Trade Centers were presented to us in a math form by this engineer when he calculated the pressure that would be on the bottom of a water line that would be 100 plus stories high.

Originally Posted by DeltaT

When I worked at Honeywell we studied the engineering/fire/security systems for the building via a film made for this purpose. That film, if still around, would be a good thing to have.

I remember one engineer taking about the necessity of having machine rooms on ever 5thor so floor just so the water pressure could be maintained in a safe manner. He described the reason why in that if a water fountain were connected to the same supply line which rose all 105 strories or so that the water pressure at the bottom of that same column line would be so high it would take off someones head if they bent over to take a drink.

And that is why, according to the film, that many machine rooms had to be built. He also described the common problem of flushing a comode on the top floor and letting it free fall to the basement.............

That's not entirely uncommon in pretty much any building grater than about 15 stories. 14 entire stories of the Burj Khalifa are entirely devoted to mechanical systems. (I think it's actually 7 rooms, 2 stories high, about every 30 floors).

Originally Posted by MHall

Thanks for the replies! So, did anyone ever actually get to tour the original WTC Plant??

When I worked at Honeywell we studied the engineering/fire/security systems for the building via a film made for this purpose. That film, if still around, would be a good thing to have.

I remember one engineer taking about the necessity of having machine rooms on ever 5thor so floor just so the water pressure could be maintained in a safe manner. He described the reason why in that if a water fountain were connected to the same supply line which rose all 105 strories or so that the water pressure at the bottom of that same column line would be so high it would take off someones head if they bent over to take a drink.

And that is why, according to the film, that many machine rooms had to be built. He also described the common problem of flushing a comode on the top floor and letting it free fall to the basement.............

Thanks for the replies! So, did anyone ever actually get to tour the original WTC Plant??

Most people don't get to see this Plus this information is over 30 years old and no longer true but the Capitol Power plant as well as the military complex out in Virginia where all the Brass resides have unbelievable systems.

The Capitol power plant use to span all over Capitol hill and took care of the heating/cooling for many, many buildings. The cooling towers were stories high. This is no longer true but the size tonage and floor wise and the heating capacity, much steam used, was actually very hard to believe.

back in '96 i was in co-op City when they where R-12 chillers and the engineers said they leaked bigtime,and he quipped that the chiled water supply line to the co-ops had a long time leaking into that Pelham Bay just down from the Conner Street I-95 bridge.did a compressor change at Con Ed Ravenswood steam plant for the control room cooling...spooky bunch of guys in that place watching cameras mounted inside the burner sections watching the flames.after a 5 story walk up within i got to the control room

Originally Posted by MHall

This is a question for all those who work as building engineers or service larger equipment.

The largest plant I've seen is The Co-op City (The Bronx) plant. I believe that they were originally Westinghouse steam driven open drives. Now they are steam driven Carrier 17M machines. Retrofitted to the original shells. I don't recall how many chillers are in the plant since I had nothing to do with the retrofit and I was only there one time. I'm thinking that there were at least 4- 6,000ton machines and it could have been up to 6 or 7 of them.

...Ron

Those old boilers ued to be commonplace, and go back in many cases to the days of coal. In those days, it was coal by the carload, then many went to number six oil, prior to going to dual fuel or gas. I lost a bid at a boeing plant for a few of those boilers, totalling six boilers, at roughly 5000 horsepower if I recall correctly.

I guess I am lucky, as I orked for a company that did all that big stuff back in the day. Now that I am an old man of 45, I see a lot of smaller stuff. Had one account running three, 300 hp boilers at 350 degree hot water for about ten years.

Supposedly Indy's district heating is 2nd in size only to New York. The plant next door to Lucas Oil Stadium will be converting to gas soon. No more coal trains running, sorry Doobie Brothers.