Upstairs air handler update

As you may have noticed our church is heated by steam.  Not very common in any new buildings but 100 years ago steam was everywhere from buildings, trains, ships, etc...  Also the original boiler was very likely powered by the main energy source of that time ... coal.  With coal common and cheap the idea of efficiency wasn't really all that important... a lot has changed since then.

A few years before we got the building a brand new boiler was put in the 'boiler room' but the pipes and air handlers are all still there (and the original boiler was there until we removed it http://cityregion.blogspot.com/2008/11/building-work-party.html).  The main air handler, the one that heats up the sanctuary from 45degrees to 68 in just 2 hours is located in the attic... That's right the sanctuary is heated from above... why?? well see the above paragraph, who cares about the fact that heat rises... who cares that this is weird and inefficient coal is cheap...

So what was wrong with the air handler... well lets see...

First this beast of a motor is what was spinning the big fan

Back in 1925 electric motors weren't all that common.  This monstrosity probably weighed 300lbs.  Where was this spark throwing beast?  It was at the top of the ladder that is climbed to access the attic.  It was here:

See that little gray motor?  Well it is sitting on the very beefy support structure that held that old motor.  It took 2-3 people to lift the old motor but the new one could be held in one hand;)

So that took care of a couple issues namely the potential fire hazard from the original motor and the uncomfortability of climbing a ladder that had a ~300lb weight above you... but there was still this big support structure that we have to climb around when we get up there.  The next step was to move the motor somewhere and get rid of the 3 foot diameter pulley that was dangerously exposed for anyone working up there while the fan is spinning.  So to keep the same RPM on the fan while putting the motor out of the way and using a smaller pulley we changed things around to use a gearbox and modern pulley.

Quite a bit of design and planning went into this.  We did this change over during the summer of 2011 since this is not something to mess around with during the winter heating season.

This was just so much of a nicer setup all compact and neat.  I designed a special mounting plate and cut it on the CNC at work

After some time we got it in place

With the old support out of the way and a hand rail added it is now much safer and easier to work and access the air handler and attic.

Due to vibrations from the motor we also moved the motor a bit so it wasn't rigidly attached to the air handler.  Not as tight and clean but we did add some red tape to the shaft which I think is pretty neat.

One thing I haven't mentioned is the bearings.  Well the old bearings were quite something

That huge shaft sticking out of the new pulley (with the spiralling red tape) sat in those grooves and had to have oil added fairly often to avoid friction getting the better of them.  We replaced the oil dripping paperweight with a modern pillow block with ball bearings.  Now there is still an original bearing on the inside of air handler which we hope do swap out next summer...

In the mean time we still have the auto-oiler my dad rigged up so we don't need to worry about it seizing up. If that were to happen boy would it get cold in the sanctuary...

Thanks to Tony Fassbind and Paul Marcella for work to make this happen