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LoadMatch Case Studies

Hydronic manufacturers employ Taco's LoadMatch® System to provide heating and cooling

Two hydronic manufacturers located at opposite ends of the country have installed the versatile Taco LoadMatch® system in their facilities to deliver energy-efficient indoor comfort. Raypak of Oxnard, California and Taco, Inc. of Cranston, Rhode Island manufacture complementary hydronic equipment -- Raypak copper finned boilers and heaters and Taco circulators, pumps, valves and related equipment. Taco supplies Raypak with a range of commercial products, to include pumps, header pumps, flow switches, controls and 00 circulators for use on its boilers.


Raypak facility in Oxnard, CA.
The two manufacturers are using the LoadMatch system for different comfort needs that one wouldn't necessarily expect. In Raypak's case the LoadMatch system is used for heat delivery to its plant during winter months; in Taco's case the LoadMatch system is used for cooling during the hot and humid summer months and heating during the winter. In both situations the LoadMatch system was an add-on to an existing system, correcting comfort problems experienced during the winter and summer months, respectively.

Taco's LoadMatch system provides better comfort than all-air systems as well as conventional hydronic systems. LoadMatch is a self-balancing system that assures the required flow to all heating and cooling units at all times. With LoadMatch, BTUs are delivered where they're needed, when they're needed.

Having outgrown its previous facility located in West Lake Village, Raypak built its new facility by the California coast northwest of Los Angeles in 2000 but didn't include heat. According to Larry Ashton, Raypak's Director of Technical Services, the new 235,000 sq. ft. plant with concrete walls proved to be cold on winter mornings. "It only affects us for about three months a year," says Larry Ashton, "but for those months, especially in the mornings, we really needed some heat."

Ashton, who handles applications engineering to include pump sizing and piping designs for Raypak's various packaged systems, had salvaged Modine vertical delivery unit heaters available from the former facility and began to consider how he could employ them with circulators in a heating system addition. Modine's Vertical Delivery Unit heaters provide downward air delivery and can be suspended up to 543 feet above a floor. Since Taco is a vendor, Ashton consulted with Glenn Wolfel, Taco's Western Region Sales Vice President, who advised him that what he was thinking of for primary and secondary loops looked a lot like the design for Taco's LoadMatch single pipe system.


Rooftop HVAC system at Raypak facility includes Taco equipment.
With a proper LoadMatch design in hand, the new heating system was soon installed using roof-mounted Raypak boilers, the Modine fan coils with 1 ¼" 0012 LoadMatch circulators and 2" pipe. Taco also supplied vertical pumps for the main loops, 1600 Series pumps for the boiler secondary loops, air separators and expansion tanks for the job. Raypak's own maintenance department installed the system. Because of the 2" pipe the system design called for a nominal 40 degree ΔT with approximately a 9 feet/sec. velocity. Maximum heat was provided at the perimeters of the loops. Since the LoadMatch system's installation the Oxnard facility is warm and cozy on winter mornings and there have been no problems with the system's operation.

In Taco's case its facility in Cranston, RI, a converted former trolley barn that the company acquired in 1954, did not come with air conditioning. Over the years the lack of conditioned make-up air created negative pressure inside the building and caused a myriad of problems affecting air quality, productivity and especially paint operations. The company would position large fans at the end of open bays during July and August to try to keep things cool but the brick walls held the heat like an "old brick oven." Clearly the company needed a system to draw in conditioned outside air to help cool the place down. Compounding the problem was a decision to expand the facility in 2006 by adding on some 60,000 sq. feet of warehouse and distribution space.

A new and modern conditioned make-up air system for the 175,000 sq. ft. facility would be an expensive proposition. Working with Carrier Corporation, however, Taco came up with a design to use a co-generation plant to reduce electricity use by a third, utilizing waste heat from electricity generation to produce both chilled water and hot water for the HVAC system.

The Taco facility in Cranston, RI.
To move water through the building, use of the company's own LoadMatch single pipe system was a natural and logical fit for both heat and cooling needs -- not only to showcase the LoadMatch system within its own facility but also to enhance energy savings and reduce installation costs -- twin benefits of the LoadMatch system that replaces control valves and most balancing valves and greatly reduces the amount of pipe needed.

The LoadMatch system installed at Taco replaces LoadMatch 00 circulators with higher gpm Taco KV pumps working with Carrier rooftop air handlers. The KV pumps provide decoupled secondary piping off the primary, single pipe loop.

Completed in June of 2006, Taco's new HVAC system, employing co-generation and LoadMatch solutions, provides comfortable heating and cooling comfort. The negative air pressure that bedeviled the plant’s interior during the summer is gone for good, replaced by a 78° ambient temperature.

To date, Taco's LoadMatch system has been installed in over 200 separate facilities in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, in structures ranging from large private residences all the way up to commercial buildings and factories.

Click here for more on Taco's LoadMatch® system.

Information provided by Raypak and Taco, Inc.