Giving an Old School a New Education in Tankless Innovation

The school district, located in Denver, CO, metro area, operates 61 schools with more than 50,000 students. One of the district’s middle schools relied on an outdated storage tank-style water heater that suddenly failed, leaving the school without hot water. Since class was in session, the district needed to replace the unit immediately. A new unit needed to be installed quickly with staff trained in its use and meet the school’s hot water needs without interruption.

The district’s plumbing department was familiar with AERCO’s products, having used the Benchmark series of boilers for several years in some of its other facilities. They were knowledgeable of and impressed by the Innovation series water heaters… and were interested in using them. The department contacted Taft Engineering to ask if an Innovation product could solve its critical, “no hot water” problem. Taft’s experts recommended AERCO's Innovation 600. The Innovation’s on-demand, tankless and highly efficient design made perfect sense for the school. Here’s why:

• Given the school’s size and daily demands, the Innovation easily meets the building’s hot water needs —while offering peak efficiency all school year long.
• The unit was small enough to fit through a standard doorway for fast installation when time was critical.
• The Innovation’s ingenious design comes fully assembled, using only a small footprint.
• With the Innovation’s tankless design, there’s no need to burn energy maintaining a setpoint of 140°F (the temperature that protects a large volume of standing water against Legionella bacteria). The Innovation operates at a safer setpoint of 120°F, which greatly reduces the risk of scalding—an important consideration in an environment with children.
• The unit was readily available and in stock just minutes away from the school.

The district’s plumbing department was able to pick up and install the Innovation 600 unit within 24 hours. Taft dispatched a technician immediately to train the school’s maintenance personnel in the Innovation’s use, and they were up to speed within hours. What’s more, in a time of ever-tightening school budgets, the district replaced a decade-old unit with one that’s tankless, highly reliable and extremely efficient.