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CHC’s 30-year-old boiler replaced
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Posted on Jun 13 2012
The Commonwealth Health Center replaced yesterday its 30-year-old steam boiler with two brand-new ones.
In a visit to CHC engineering facility yesterday, Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta showed media the vintage equipment and the urgency to address its leak, among other problems.
“It’s very timely that we received these new boilers because the old one we’re using is 30 years old, which is very dangerous,” he told Saipan Tribune, adding they were relieved when they finally received yesterday the shipment of new boilers.
The machines were acquired using a grant from the Office of Insular Affairs.
Saipan Tribune saw yesterday the unloading of the new steam boilers, which, according to contractor Tony Scragg, is worth around $500,000 and will last more than 30 years.
According to Hospital Emergency Preparedness director Warren Villagomez, the two boilers will phase out the single boiler at CHC.
“These two will expand the capacity of boiler usage such as in kitchen dishwashing machine and for the operating room as well as in other areas of the facility. Overall, it will sustain our needs and would cut down our fuel consumption. So economically, this is favorable to CHC,” he told Saipan Tribune.
He said it would take 30 days for the new equipment to start working, pending the completion of all plumbing connections.
Babauta said the acquisition of the boilers is among the corporation’s biggest projects. He described this tool as important to the operation of the hospital because without a functioning boiler, everything will be impacted including major operations and surgeries.
House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Ramon Basa (R-Saipan) described the new machines as “a life-saver.”
Babauta disclosed last week that CHC also installed a new automatic transfer switch, or ATS, with 750 kilovolt capacity. In an emergency power system, an automatic transfer switch transfers a building’s source of electricity from its primary source to a secondary one, usually from commercial supply to back-up generator supply.
