AFTER 232 YEARS, INN
SHIFTS TO HIGH EFFICIENCY
A 98% ef cient water heater keeps the place cooking on its busiest day of the year
The Griswold Inn, founded in Essex, CT, in
1776 near the banks of the Connecticut
River, is the oldest continuously run tavern
in the U.S. e “Gris” has catered to yachts-men and overland travelers every day of the
year for 232 years.
The venerable inn – captured by British
troops and used as a base of operations during the American
Revolution and as a place of entertainment for sailors during
Prohibition – has seen generations of Americans come and go.
But last Christmas day, it needed a substantial overhaul
brought on by the sudden death of an eight-year-old, half-mil-lion Btuh commercial water heater, the only source of domestic
hot water for the Griswold’s award-winning kitchen.
Years earlier, just a er a competitor installed the terminally ill water heater, the owners tapped Old Lyme, CT-based
Appleby Plumbing Co., a third-generation family business,
to “manage energy affairs” for their many real estate and
business holdings, work that Chuck Appleby says has put
the Gris and many of their other buildings back on par with
new facilities.
“ e Gris is an amazing place, but with all that history,
retro tting, and updating plumbing and mechanical systems,
[it] requires a lot of preplanning and care,” says Appleby.
“Of course, the old inn, which includes guest rooms and
a world-class restaurant, was never built to accommodate
modern mechanical systems,” he adds. “But, fortunately, that
didn’t become a roadblock to the quick delivery and installation of a new, 400,000 Btuh commercial water heater there,
which we had in place and operable just a few days a er the
emergency began.”
Appleby recalls the frantic nature of the initial call. e
restaurant was lling, and a fresh snowfall “added a sense
of perfection to everything,” he said. “Except, that is, the
restaurant was rapidly running out of hot water at one of the
busiest times of year.”
e chef was beside himself. e owner was perplexed.
With crossed ngers, Appleby was able to reach his wholesaler, F. W. Webb. Since it was a holiday, he called sales pro
John Blades at his home who, as soon as he pulled his children
out of the bathtub, drove to his Hartford warehouse to check
the inventory and make preparations for the shipment.
Appleby told Blades that he knew exactly what he wanted
as a replacement – a 400,000 Btuh, LP- red, high-e ciency
eF water heater made by Bradford White. Appleby explained
that Nick Giu re, the manufacturer’s executive vice president, had introduced him to the eF at the last AHR Expo,
and it was just what the Gris needed.
A few days later, Appleby’s three-man crew removed
the old water heater and fully installed the new unit in one
