School Boiler Maintenance: Learning Safety

It may sound as old-fashioned as the three R's, but when it comes to protecting our students and teachers, there is no substitute for staff education and a proper maintenance schedule.

When it comes to safety in public places, "out of sight, out of mind" pretty much describes the concern most people have for their own well-being. But what people don't know can hurt them, particularly when it comes to boilers and pressure vessels.

The fact is, boilers and pressure vessels are everywhere and they are often located within close proximity of every person, every day.

Schools are no exception. Numerous serious incidents over the past decade have occurred across America in public schools from Spencer, OK (1982) and Gallup, NM (1984), to North Haven, CT (1999) and Chicopee, MA (1999). These incidents not only resulted in considerable economic loss, but more importantly, in death and severe injury to students and school personnel alike.

"School districts are likely to have several hundred pressure retaining items...each posing a potential explosion hazard," says Lee Doran, National Board governmental affairs and international representative and training course instructor. "School administrators rarely make the connection between their tight budgets and the adverse affect on reliability, safety, and operation of the affected equipment. Consequently, school boilers and related devices get a low priority in the budgeting process.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING

Better communication between the personnel involved in pressure equipment operation and the "front office" would potentially change many of the unsatisfactory attitudes, and promote an understanding of what support is really needed for safety. Smaller investments on boiler maintenance and operator training now can prevent larger costs and possible accidents from occurring later. Something as simple as better staff training could make a huge, positive impact on the threat of an accident or malfunction.

Very few school districts provide the opportunity for adequate training of the staff that operates or performs seemingly small repairs to pressure equipment. As Doran observes, "It has been my experience while conducting National Board boiler safety seminars across the country, that many boiler operation and maintenance personnel have never received any training on boilers or other fuel burning apparatus for which they are responsible." It is ironic that in most school districts -- where education and training is the goal -- the training of boiler maintenance personnel does not serve as a critical function.

However, even in districts where good maintenance programs and training are scheduled, problems can occur. In the Gallup-McKinley school district in New Mexico, Joe De La 0, former director of maintenance for the district, recalls the boiler-furnace explosion that resulted from an unfortunate combination of events. Over a period of several months, an inexperienced and untrained electrician tried to keep a failing hot water heating boiler operating. On one cold winter afternoon in January 1984, the worker tampered with the burner programmers and relays, repeatedly, until a suspected malfunction of the programmer led to the ignition of a large accumulation of natural gas. The result was a violent explosion. Although no one was killed, three workers were injured. The boiler and building sustained significant damage, according to Brad Hoover, one of the workers who still provides boiler maintenance for the district.

"The accident occurred at a critical time. It was around 3 p.m., about the time children were being sent home for the day," explained Hoover. "We were very thankful that students and teachers escaped injury. I believe because the boiler was located in the basement of the school building, in a room with concrete walls, many people were saved from possibly very serious injury."

The obvious conclusion from Doran, who viewed the accident scene after the fact was clear: "...to prevent reoccurrence of an accident of this nature is to fully indoctrinate boiler maintenance personnel on the operation of the burner flame safeguard control (FSG) and relays. If a malfunction of an FSG is suspected, it should be tested on a tester built for this purpose. Never bypass controls and limits; this almost always guarantees an accident."

The damage was very extensive and required replacement of the entire boiler, controls, and stack. The incident was not a boiler explosion (failure of the boiler pressure parts due to overpressure), but a furnace explosion. The explosion consisted of the ignition of a large accumulation of natural gas fuel in the combustion chamber, which caused the pressure boundary to be broken.

Don Jenkins, chief boiler inspector for Kansas, supports the National Board official's views on school preparedness or lack thereof. "The biggest problem is unqualified operators and maintenance personnel" Jenkins points Out that "most educators don't think as much about mechanical systems as they do about topics directly linked to the educational process. Further, it's sometimes very difficult to find qualified (maintenance) people for small districts. Traditionally, many boiler operators were former boiler technicians who had received training in the U.S. Navy. But now that the Navy has converted most of its ships propulsion systems from steam to gas turbines or diesel electric, it is harder to find trained operators."