Why It's Important to Hire a Natural Gas Expert (And Not A Plumber)

MBS Engineers focus on natural gas, only. 

We're not plumbers. We're not leak inspectors. We use state-of-the-art detection tools and are able to fix what we find.

MBS Engineering was contacted a local high school district in Marin County, and found out they were experiencing issues with their natural gas fed pool heater boilers. The district has pools at a number of their schools.

​The pools are heated to keep a constant temperature of 80° Fahrenheit to ensure people could swim all year round. They were experiencing alarms due to low gas pressure at their larger boilers which heat the pool water. MBS was tasked to find out why this was happening and engineer a design to rectify the problem. After a site visit, MBS engineers realized the gas regulator, which is a safety device that controls the amount of gas pressure from a higher pressure down to a lower pressure, was installed in the wrong location and the entire gas system was designed improperly. 

​MBS engineers knew from experience that because these boilers require such a high demand of natural gas on a consistent basis, the single gas regulator in place could not keep up and supply the pressure needed for proper operation. If the issue were not caught, it could have led to damage to the expensive boilers as well as a revolving problem with alarms and time spent servicing the boilers.

​MBS’s solution involved installing individual gas regulators at each boiler, to provide better control. This way each boiler operates independently. MBS performed the work in one day in order to avoid downtime for the pool and the regular users of the pool. They have not experienced issues since.

MBS is now evaluating pool heater boilers at each of their other campuses and seeing the same design error and is proposing a similar solution to the problem.

There was also the issue of a manual shut-off valve being installed high in the air, towards the ceiling as pictured. This creates a situation that if the gas needed to be turned off in an emergency, a technician would have to spend time finding a ladder, setting up the ladder, climbing up to the shut-off valve and turning it off. In a gas emergency, this is precious time wasted and could result in a catastrophe. MBS was able to install new shut-off valves to a level that is easily accessed at each appliance.
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