Community Environmental Center leads a state-of-the-art solar thermal project for the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Copper heat exchangers for the solar thermal system at Plaza de los Ancianos in Bushwick

(July 14, 2010)—Community Environmental Center (CEC) in Queens is heading a solar thermal project for the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, which is installing the state-of-the-art system at Plaza de los Ancianos in Bushwick, announced Richard M. Cherry, the president of CEC.

Located at 297 Wilson Avenue, the 8-story Plaza de los Ancianos has been providing Brooklyn’s seniors with affordable housing for 15 years. Low-income residents pay only 30 percent of their income toward rent.

“The climate crisis and the evident need to use energy sources other than oil and gas are driving an urgent, growing demand for free, renewable energy,” said Cherry. “The Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council is a forward-looking agency and recognizes that solar energy can reduce fuel costs and keep Los Ancianos affordable for the elderly residents who need its services.”

Maggie Grady, the project manager at Ridgewood Bushwick who has been overseeing the installation of the solar thermal system, commented, “All the housing units that Ridgewood Bushwick develops and manages are 100 percent affordable, and affordable buildings often run on very tight operating budgets. We’ve been looking at new forms of green technology that would help us reduce our operating costs, and the solar thermal system fits our needs exactly. Of course we’re also excited to be able to reduce our carbon footprint.”

The solar themal system at Los Ancianos will have 21 4’ x 10’ solar panels, or collectors, on the roof of the 8-story building and a single 1,200-gallon water-storage tank in the basement. The tank is outfitted with two layers of seven massive copper coils, or heat exchangers, which will heat the water for the tenants’ showers and baths, the dishwashers and washing machines.

Quixotic Systems, Inc., of New York City designed the entire system, which uses panels manufactured by Heliodyne, Inc., of Richmond, California. The system will be fully operational by the middle of August.

“The large collectors,” says Richard Klein, Quixotic’s president, “result in a higher output rating. This is a big building–94 units–and these collectors are the right size for creating the heat value that will result in the best savings-to-investment ratio.”

The single water-storage tank was a matter of economy of scale as well as cost: the basement at Los Ancianos cannot accommodate a series. The lone tank, which has a galvanized sheet-metal exterior and an EPDM liner–the sort used to line ponds and water gardens–has the added advantage of being partially collapsible, which facilitates delivery and set-up.

Still, Klein reports that it was a bit of an adventure transporting the water-storage tank from the first floor of Los Ancianos to the basement. Posts and railings had to be removed, to maneuver the tank down a flight of stairs.

Indeed, installing solar energy systems in New York City dwellings can be challenging. “Installations on tall city buildings can get very complex and expensive,” says Klein. “But the environmental and financial benefits are unparalleled.”

A well-designed system, according to Klein, “is capable of providing approximately 50 percent of a building’s annual hot water usage. A large residential building uses an average of 200 million Btu of natural gas per month for hot water only. Using this average consumption in 100,000 residential buildings in New York, one can begin to see that 50 percent savings is a very respectable number indeed.”

The solar hot-water system at Los Ancianos is one of three that the nonprofit Community Environmental Center is installing in New York City this summer, including the city’s largest residential solar-thermal installation, at Wadsworth Terrace in Manhattan.

CONTACT: Alexis Greene, Community Environmental Center, 718-784-1444, ext. 156; agreene@cecenter.org

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