Cold Weather and Condensate Lines

It’s cold outside and things like to freeze. Steam traps and condensate lines are oftentimes the first things to freeze up with cold snaps like today. If your facility is having trouble with cold weather and condensate lines or make-up air coils freezing, we have a solution for you and it’s not as costly as you might think.
The Problem
Any time condensate is exposed to frigid outside air temperatures, there is a risk of the line freezing if a steam trap, valve, or strainer fails. When the line freezes, it backs up the make-up air coil. This can result in a very expensive problem on your hands. For example, we had a hospital call us with cracked and frozen make-up air coils. We could have just sold more coils, but we wanted to solve this recurring problem for them once and for all: we did a glycol conversion.
The Solution
What does this look like? We place a small shell and tube heat exchanger with enough heating capacity near the make-up air unit. This heat exchanger has glycol on the tube side and steam on the shell side. It heats up a small, dedicated glycol loop for the make-up air coil. This allows us to only have glycol exposed to the outside air, while the steam and condensate lines remain inside the building. This eliminates the risk of the lines freezing. The result is your make-up air coils are protected from the elements and your coil life gets extended well beyond what it would have been.
At Apex, we don’t just sell parts and equipment, we focus on solutions that put you ahead. If you have a system that has been giving you troubles, please reach out to one of our sales engineers. We are happy to help and our advice and experience are free!
Stay warm out there, it’s only 120 more days until we can go outside again.