SMALL JOB, BIG GREEN SAVINGS
This combo car wash/laundromat will use nearly 50% less energy,
thanks to new equipment tied into a solar system.
HigH-efficiency Heating
equipment fueled by solar power
will enable Ron grogan, owner of
Suds-n-Duds, Ronan, Mont., to
save nearly half on his annual utility
bills. The project earned glen Kauff-
man, owner of Montana Radiant,
Missoula, Mont., a third-place 2009
green Mechanical award in the Best
commercial category.
grogan purchased Suds-n-Duds,
a 5,000-sq.ft., four-bay car wash and
laundromat, in June 2007. the prop-
erty was built in 1996.
grogan first became acquainted
with Kauffman through a referral
from a company called “the axmen.”
The axmen is mostly a retail store, but
also installs wood stoves. They’ve sold
photovoltaic and power systems for
awhile and recently added solar ther-
mal systems.
“They also own a propane business
and made initial contact with Ron to
see if he would consider having them
become his propane supplier,” Kauff-
man says. “They looked at his current
system to see how he could save energy
and presented the idea of solar.”
“the heat exchanger in the larger
boiler had been rebuilt once,” Kauff-
man says. “the boilers were still in
working condition and i ended up hav-
ing Ron sell them to another car-wash
owner i know who had an emergency
breakdown on two of his boilers.”
Kaufmann replaced the snow
melting boiler with a triangle tube
Prestige Model Solo 250 condensing
boiler that modulates from 65,000 to
245,000 Btuh input with 95% afUe. it
is controlled from a simple slab sensor
stat that was originally installed.
Suds ‘N Duds is a combination
Laundromat and car wash.
Solar collectors helped slash
bills for hot water by 50%.
“Ron wanted the ability to use the
solar-heated water for ice melting, so
i hooked an extra coil from one of the
solar storage tanks into the snowmelt
system using a tekmar injection con-
trol,” Kauffman says. “there may not
be much energy there when he needs
it, but we are working with low water-
supply temperatures and may utilize it
more than i expect.”
The larger boiler that heated water
for the car wash and laundromat was
replaced with three Rinnai model
R94LSi modulating tankless water
heaters. they will modulate from
15,000 to 190,000 Btuh with an energy
factor of 0.82.
“the three units are tied together
using Rinnai’s linked controller, giving
us the ability to modulate from 15,000
to 570,000 Btuh,” Kauffman says. “i do
wish the new condensing version of
the Rinnai would have been available
in the market when we were doing the
job,” he adds.
“the other option was to put in a
boiler and add a heat exchanger, but
that would have complicated the project and been more expensive. i thought
it would be better to put the money into
more solar collectors instead, which
really do a majority of the water heating.
i did convince them to go with a boiler
on the snowmelt — it made more sense
