Spiritual is Cool – Willow Creek Church
Contemporary message, cool music, drama
and true life interdenominational teaching about God took the
Willow Creek Community Church from a handful of lively students in
the 70's to nearly 24,000 followers flocking the northwest suburbs
of Chicago each week to investigate Christianity. Willow
Creek's highly motivated congregation continues to grow with more
than 100 ministries serving the spiritual, physical and relational
needs of millions around the world, and affiliated churches in 13
different countries. Today's Willow Creek congregation
joins together for their spiritual journey at a million square foot
campus situated on 155 acres of farmland in Barrington,
Illinois. The latest facility addition included a $73
million, four level, 7200-seat auditorium used for weekly services,
full production musicals, multimedia presentations and
lectures. The college campus style setting of Willow Creek
promotes its community atmosphere and social interaction by
offering a 10,000 title library/bookstore, food court cafe,
conference center, gymnasium style activity center, food pantry,
class rooms and lecture halls, as well as the ever popular
cappuccino and Wi-Fi bar.
Keeping the facilities adequately
cooled during the hot summer months has been quite a challenge when
cottonwood season is in full bloom. The auditorium is filled
to capacity for its multiple event-style religious services every
weekend and mid-week. Top-of-the line audio visual systems
and computer equipment run continuously for ministry activities
throughout the rest of the facility. Three Marley cooling
towers are utilized to keep the facility cooled. They cool
the water needed to cool the refrigerant for two 400 ton Carrier
chillers that are part of their chilled water loop air conditioning
system.
As water in the cooling tower trickles down through the tower, high volumes of air blow across it. Airborne debris that gets mixed in with the water, like cottonwood, end up in the cooling tower basin. The cooled water in the basin is piped into the building and runs through a strainer to clean these contaminants out. Willow Creek's HVACR specialist, Shaun Hager, said that during cottonwood season, they needed to remove and wash the clogged strainer two times a day, taking up to 45 minutes each time. Solid contaminants sucked into cooling towers can also deposit on heat transfer surfaces, increasing fouling factors and energy consumption. These contaminants also clog the small spray nozzle orifices and cause poor distribution through the fill.
Todd Proulx, systems/project manager for Willow
Creek, saw Permatron's PreVent® Equipment Protection Filter for air
intakes at a local facilities trade show. After discussing
their air intake contamination problem with Permatron, two custom
sized 142" x 127" filters made of flexible black high abrasion
media were easily installed on the primary Marley NC Class 650 ton
cooling tower in the spring. When cottonwood season and heat
waves hit during the summer months, maintenance became a whole lot
easier. Shaun Hager commented, "The PreVent® filters
looked like they had caught every piece of cottonwood for miles
around. Based on the water pressure gauges on each side of
the strainer, the strainer only needed to be rinsed clean once
every four days instead of two times per day, with the PreVent
filters installed on the tower air intake. The strainer was
90% cleaner."
Routine cleaning of the PreVent filter face will be done when each system cycles off, since they rotate between three cooling tower units, depending on heat load. Annual cooling tower cleaning also includes manual cleaning of the water basin, and mandatory equipment shut-down for the duration of the cleaning 1 time per year. Contaminants left in the basin promote bacteria and algae growth, increasing the need for chemical treatments, which ultimately reduce the basin life. Basin cleaning is also simpler with the PreVent® filter because the messy solid contaminants were kept out of the system to begin with.