McKinstry installed a new cooling system at the Chelan County Courthouse in Wenatchee, Washington, which will eliminate chemicals from entering the city’s wastewater.
The old cooling system at the courthouse relied on an aging cooling tower that was requiring increasing maintenance costs and was near failure. The County Commissioners authorized McKinstry to proactively replace the system before it failed.
The original cooling tower used a chemical water treatment to keep the water from corroding the interior of the system or from fostering bacteria. Chemical water treatment is a common approach in many water-based building systems, but these chemicals enter the city’s wastewater when the system is flushed during maintenance and can pose a challenge to wastewater treatment plants. These chemicals also cost over $3,000 annually.
The new cooling tower uses a water treatment system that uses electromagnetic pulses to treat the water, which eliminates the need for any chemicals.
The scope of McKinstry's work also included removing a large, unused radio antenna and retro-commissioning, which is the systematic testing of all the systems in the building to discover low- and no-cost improvements that reduce energy and water consumption.
