From energy retrofits to HVAC overhauls, the case studies presented here wil show you how we’ve reduced building operations costs while improving energy efficiency for some of our clients.

Case Study – a boiler retrofit

The client

Maple Towers Apartments - 1275 Elgin Ave., Burlington, Ontario – a 372-unit 14 story condominium highrise.

The challenge

DBS was required to improve the performance of the existing boiler plant - consisting of 40 year-old Rudd boilers operating at 65-70 % efficiency. and convert the plant to capitalize on the energy efficiency.

The scope of work

DBS redesigned the piping configuration from a supply / return application and converted it into a primary / secondary configuration. This enabled the new plant to maximize heat transfer and minimize heat loss due to stack loss and unnecessary operation of boilers.

DBS also upgraded the indoor / outdoor controller from on/off control to a full-modulation controller with pump delay and intelligent digital signal for fine control of building temperatures. The result would be less gas consumption and with the use of VFD's (variable frequency drives) which are part of the upgraded boiler design we also capitalize on electrical savings.

The results

With this system, our client is seeing returns on operational costs of approx. 30% and the installed system in this particular case will have a ROI of just less than 3 years.