Excellent School, Excellent Air

By Evelyn Witterholt. 

Faced with indoor air quality concerns, Harvard Medical School invested in PURE-Steam Coil Cleaning to improve their HVAC system. 

Harvard Medical School is considered one of the best places in the country to study medicine. The Longwood campus, located in Boston, Massachusetts, contains 14 buildings, a few of which were built in 1906. In recent years, the Director of Facilities, Peter Stroup, has raised concerns about the buildings’ HVAC system. His team has reported problems with air flow and needed a solution to improve the campus’ overall indoor air quality (IAQ). 

Thankfully, their team discovered Pure Air Control Services, a service offering of Weatherproofing Technologies Inc. (WTI). They had learned about their PURE-Steam Coil Cleaning process from Kjelgaard Engineering, the commissioning agent for the buildings’ overall renovations. They learned that PURE-Steam is considered one of the only green certified coil cleaning processes available in the country. From there, Pure Air/WTI got straight to work in cleaning up all the buildings’ coils.  

The PURE-Steam Coil Cleaning process uses no chemicals and instead uses steam of up to 350° F to clean the coils. It also sanitizes the coils, removes deep debris and improves the overall IAQ of a building. It also increases a building’s energy efficiency, extends the life of HVAC equipment and improves the system’s cooling capacity. For this project, it was used on 100 air handler units over a five-month period. 

Stroup and his team were so pleased with the process, they presented the work at the 2017 NFMT Conference on Double Digit Energy Reduction. He stated: “We saw dramatic results, as much as 30% change in pressure over the coils and that hadn’t been cleaned that well in some time... and (we are) very happy with the investment. “