Location:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Product:
State Commercial Rack and Common Venting System
Product Overview:
- Uses the industry’s lightest 199,000 BTU high efficiency condensing tankless water heaters
- Able to link up to 20 heaters
- Easy field installation
- Multiple design and installation configurations
- Can easily isolate one heater for maintenance, which extends system lif
The smell of delicious food simmering on stovetops is common in downtown New Orleans—a city known for its impassioned cooking and extravagant dining options. Any given day of the week, the same attention-grabbing aromas can be found wafting from a large commercial kitchen in the Central City neighborhood—just next door to the French Quarter.
Yet, inside this Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard building the story is anything but common.
No matter if it’s a holiday, weekend or storming outside, the kitchen team at New Orleans Mission is serving up more than 700 hot meals each day for the city’s residents without a home. And the kitchen is only the beginning of this outreach.
Founded in 1989, New Orleans Mission is the city’s largest faith-based private service provider to homeless and economically disadvantaged residents. In addition to providing more than 20,000 meals each month, the Mission can provide a warm bed and shelter, shower and laundry, safety and counseling for more than 250 men and women each day.
It’s a huge job to provide meals, laundry, showers and lodging at the mission, which has dorm-style rooms that can accommodate up to 75 people each. There are eight showers and several laundry rooms with both commercial and residential washers.
Over the years, the program’s outreach has grown and recently started to outpace the capabilities of the original mechanical systems. In 2015, the Mission began a multi-year renovation to upgrade the facility with new commercial-grade kitchen and a more robust hot water system to power the showers, laundry and kitchen.
David Robertson, foreman for Powers Plumbing who led the renovation, said the project was like a “big jigsaw puzzle” due to the scope and phases of the project.
“Hot water is essential to the daily operations of the Mission, and they wanted to ensure they never turned anyone away,” Robertson said. “So during the renovation, while we took down half of the existing building for demolition and built the new construction, we brought in temporary electric water heaters to help the existing boilers provide service.”
The mission was using three old boilers for water heating, and the hot water supply was insufficient to meet its laundry, shower and kitchen needs.
“Showers are on day and night, people are washing clothes at all hours, and they’re cooking hundreds of meals three times a day,” Robertson said. “There’s never a time when the hot water isn’t being used.”
Mission leaders wanted a hot water system that could replace the existing boiler system and fulfill the needs of the program for years to come. “The mechanical room was designed for the existing boilers, which didn’t survive, so we had a small 10-by-15 mechanical room with fire-rated walls that don’t breathe,” Robertson said. “Instead of using boilers again, we recommended a common-vent system.”
Powers Plumbing helped guide the facility to a State Water Heaters commercial rack system. Robertson said he specified eight tankless water heaters on a 120-degree line to provide hot water for showers, bathrooms and mop sinks and four water heaters to deliver 140-degree water to the kitchen.
“Choosing State was the best decision we made on this entire project,” Robertson said. “We really like the quality of State products, and State’s local rep actually came to the Mission to answer questions.”
Robertson was also pleased that the State common-vent solution required just six roof penetrations, while concentric venting would have required eleven.
“It was a breeze installing the State water heaters,” Robertson said. “There wasn’t a single error code, and it paired easily with the recirculating system.”
Robertson says that it would be next to impossible to run the mission without a reliable supply of hot water.
“It’s really essential to meet their needs for showers, sanitation and cooking,” he says. “And there’s a night-and-day difference between what the mission had before and the State performance. The system has delivered plenty of hot water without a hiccup. The kitchen line delivers 140 degrees with no problem.”
Powers Plumbing does extensive research on hot water innovations like the space-saving State rack system, staying ahead of the game by testing many different products to find the ones that will give them an edge over the competition.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see how the hot water upgrade is changing people’s lives at the mission,” says Robertson.
“Choosing State was the best decision we made on this entire project.”
David Robertson
Powers Plumbing
Plumber:
Powers Plumbing
Harvey, Louisiana