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You cannot underestimate the importance of a strong team. It takes more than one person to ensure that the end result meets the expectations of all those involved. We’ve all heard a version of a saying emphasizing the importance of teammates. A jobsite is no different. A team of industry experts came together on one particular jobsite in Lethbridge, Alta, aiming to solve the issue of an ageing hot water system on its last legs. The team of experts, comprising

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, helped ensure that the project ran smoothly and the customer was satisfied.

At A-1 Truck & Car Wash, they had relied on a conventional hot water system powered by two large, two-stage boilers, each delivering two million BTUs. This lead-leg configuration meant that one boiler was operating to meet the demand, with the second only activating when needed. There were concerns from the owners of A-1 regarding a failure — if the primary boiler failed, then only one unit remained to shoulder the full demand, leaving the facility vulnerable to service interruptions.

“We had a long-term, good customer that operates a large commercial car wash, and they were running into issues with their existing boilers,” shared Justin Fisher, owner of Simpson Plumbing. “With the required updates, Colin LaRose (project manager at Simpson Plumbing) went to work on dealing with the customer and on alternate solutions.”

The solution? Five NCC199CDV Noritz commercial condensing tankless water heaters paired with a Noritz commercial controller. Elements of the older infrastructure were incorporated to allow for the existing boiler to maintain operation.

“Going with the tankless option gave us the opportunity to leave the customer up and running the entire time,” shares Fisher. “There was maybe one hour shutdown that was required to transfer some water line, and then they were up and running. There was no interruption to business doing it the way we did, whereas, if we had gone with a more intrusive method, like adding a new high-efficiency boiler, or something like that, there could have been a lot more subject to interruption to the business.”

This means that when the boiler does finally call it quits, more tankless units can be installed. A separate HBX controller, the CPU-0600, was installed to integrate and manage the old boiler, triggering it to supplement the tankless installation whenever needed to meet the load.

“The HBX is a staging controller that enables the tankless units to act as the primary heat source, maximizing both efficiency and reliability,” says Joshua Ferguson, outside technical sales representative for Barclay Sales. “If, for any reason, the tankless system can’t keep up, such as when all 10 bays are operating at once, the HBX will activate the original boiler as a backup to boost output temporarily.”

Lethbridge sits at a population of around 113,671, according to the province’s website, making it Alberta’s fourth highest population in the province. Due to its geographical location close to the United States border, it sees a high number of commercial trucks through its city, meaning that A-1 sees quite a bit of customer traffic.

This was a large reason behind the system’s stage approach. “We can give you this first phase of a retrofit of your entire mechanical system without having to blow hundreds of 1,000s of dollars on the budget right away,” explains Ferguson. “They can do it piece-by-piece. If you have to do maintenance on one of the units, we’ll put in five of these commercial tankless units to get our million BTUs, as opposed to one single, one-million-BTU boiler.

We can have that redundancy, whereas the volume of needs is increased for how many bays are being used.” The old boiler continues providing two million BTUs, meaning the entire system has the availability for three million BTUs. “It’s also really nice to get the chance to be part of a project where we’re bringing in kind of the new way of doing things because there have been a lot of changes,” shares Fisher.

“In a situation, probably five years ago, we would have just ordered that same boiler, popped the old one out, put the new one in, and away you go. With a project like this, there’ll be lots more to come, where we’re having to integrate new technology into these systems.”

One of the biggest challenges for this project was simply finding the room to fit each of the components into the upgraded system. “Since it was an older building, filled with two existing boilers and old infrastructure, it always adds complexity to the job,” shares Fisher. “How do we get this to fit in? Where can we locate it? How can we do it so that when we need to add in the future, it’s going to work out? Just prepping the area for the installation is always a bit of a challenge.” To add to the complexities, the mechanical room was located on the second floor.

About six months after the system was already up and operating, there were some issues with the units. A sandblasting company was located across the street, which was causing trouble for the tankless units as they were taking in contaminated air. This meant that Simpson Plumbing had to come up with a different approach for the air intake. “We kind of deduced it was an environmental outside condition of what we had seen. The sandblasting wasn’t even there when we first built the product itself,” shares Ferguson. “The other environmental condition was the car wash. The road leading into the car wash was completely jackhammered and taken up and rebuilt. A lot more dust contaminants were pushed through the air.”

This meant that attention needed to be paid to the incoming air. “It’s similar to what you would look like if you’re not changing your furnace filter for a year-and-a-half,” explains Ferguson.

A-1 Truck and Car Wash plans on a second phase of retrofits, which would see another five additional Noritz tankless water heaters installed, alongside two Noritz Hybrid Hot series units to replace the backup legacy boiler. The Hybrid Hot series utilizes standard tank water heaters in combination with tankless units.

The success of this project inspired Simpson Plumbing to utilize this approach in other projects. “That’s a high-five in our direction,” shared Ferguson.

Included on the project was one of Simpson Plumbing’s current apprentices. The hope is to have the next generation of tradespeople working with new products and installation approaches, so that they are comfortable with the high-efficiency new technology. “We’re also trying to incorporate them into these installs so that they are learning how things will be going ahead… just to ensure that we’re at least producing educated people going forward,” shares Fisher. “We are starting to see a huge crossover between the old-style plumbing and the newer stuff. There’s a lot more technology, a lot more literature and stuff involved in some of these new installations.”