Booster Shot: How Boards Can Save Money by Tweaking Your Water Booster

In its most basic form, a booster consists of one, two, or three pumps controlled by a pressure sensor. If the pressure is above a certain point, the pumps shut off; when it drops below that point, the pumps come on. The problem is that a booster of this type is almost always "on" because as soon as the pump shuts off, the pressure drops and the pump starts up again. In fact, in many buildings, the pump is just left on manual ("hand") and runs 24/7/365 without a break.

I've seen many that

should never have been

installed in the first place.

I was at a five-story building recently where the booster pump was set to hand operation and was going full blast all the time. The piping was insane; it ran up through the basement ceiling to the first floor, came back down, went through the booster and then went up and down a second time. There were other inefficiencies as well.

Small Tweak, Big Payback

A one-horsepower pump running 24/7 uses about $1,300 in electricity in a year in Con Edison service territory. If the booster could be adjusted so that it ran only 18 hours a day, you would save about $340 annually. For larger pumps, the savings are even greater.

Frankly, it should be possible to cut back to even less than 18 hours a day. In fact, in some smaller buildings, it may be possible to simply shut the booster off: I've seen many that should never have been installed in the first place.

Generally speaking, it should not be expensive to have a booster technician come in and tune up the unit for more efficient operation, so payback should be fairly quick. Here's a chart that outlines potential savings:

Illustration by Marcellus Hall

Adapted from "Energy Detective: The Case of the Bothersome Booster" (Habitat, May 2014). Tom Sahagian is Senior Program Director, Technical Services, at Enterprise Community Partners.

 For more, see our Site Map or join our Archive >>