News and Events

Tucked away in Mann Student Center on Eastern Nazarene’s campus is a boiler dating back to 1958. The boiler was given new life after the college converted from oil to gas heating.

“[That boiler is from] 1958, but if you know old things, they’re built better,” said Dale Vasco, Eastern’s maintenance manager. “It will outlast the boiler we just put in.”

In 2015, the old boiler was cleaned, re-tubed and brought back to life for gas heating. A new boiler was also brought in to heat Mann Student Center, Munro Hall, Spangenberg Hall, Williamson Hall, Gardner Hall, Shrader Hall and Lahue Physical Education Center.

“[The new one] is a 20-year, maybe 30-year boiler, that’s what they’re rated for,” Vasco said. “The old one is almost double the thickness.”

Vasco said the switch from oil to gas heating, outside of saving the College an estimated $250,0000, has also lowered the maintenance needs to, “pretty much nothing.”

“Gas runs itself. With the oil it was a constant break down,” he said. “You’d see black clouds above you and there’d be soot falling because [the oil heating] just decided to do it’s own thing.”

Before the conversion, Vasco said he and his crew worked on the boilers constantly. With the age of the pipes being the same age as the boilers, there were two incidents where pipes needed to be replaced, in 2015, near Gardner Hall, and in 2016, by the Mann Student Center. Part of the problem was overuse of the boilers.

“At the time when the oil was running, say it was zero degrees out, all three boilers were running,” Vasco said. “This gas one doesn’t even have to run the whole time. It’s that efficient.”

With the new boiler and the one from the 50s, both working together, the maintenance issues are a thing of the past for Vasco and his crew.

“We just think back and it’s like we were always working on those boilers and it was like that forever,” he said.