All,
Just to keep you all in the loop on the building steam generators. Facilities has cleaned a large amount of silt and debris from the first unit's boiler coils and estimate 85% + of the coils are clear. They are reassembling the boiler and will be pressure testing it this evening. If everything looks good, they will activate that unit tomorrow. Depending on the performance of the unit we will be able to decide where we go next.
Over 20 PSI - Humidity in the vivarium should range from sufficient to acceptable.
Over 40 PSI - not optimal but humidity in the vivarium and operations of the cage washer and autoclaves should be achievable
Over 60 PSI- As designed, we should be fully operational and able to disable the second generator for flushing.
Either way, we will begin flushing the second steam generator as soon as the first unit is back in operation.
Facilities has also ordered new boiler coils, expected to be delivered within a month. Based on the performance of the newly cleaned original coils, we may keep these in reserve for emergency swap out.
I also had the Steris rep in today to walk the site about a secondary steam source for the research and basement autoclaves. Unfortunately it was not as straightforward as I had hoped. A new 180 kVa boiler on the 3rd floor would require new piping to each unit serviced, we could not simply tap into the existing steam pipes. A second approach is to retrofit all of the autoclaves in the building with an integral steam generator independent of house steam. The downside of this is we would lose connection to house steam and our service agreement costs would rise.
I'm going to get proposals for each scenario and I'm working with construction services to help implement whichever way we go.
I appreciate your patience during this unforeseen, and I mean this in the most literal way, disaster, but hope to have a handle on the issues shortly.
Thanks!