Wireless Flood Control for Cooling Towers
A major New Jersey Medical Center needed to monitor the water levels in two sets of cooling towers. Each set consists of four towers connected together. A wireless system was selected because running cables inside the hospital back to the boiler control room would be impossible.
One set, the East Tower set, with severe weather could flood the drain with so much water to the medical center sumps that they overflowed, flooding the boiler room and hospital operating rooms, causing patient procedures to be cancelled.
As a result, the East Towers and boiler room sump were the first to be connected to a new wireless monitoring system. An indicator and sounder activates when a water level in any of the four individual towers of the East Tower set becomes too high or too low. An acknowledge button on the monitoring system can be pushed to silence the sounder. The indicator will stay active until the water level returns to normal.
The sump located in the boiler room, has only a high level and works in the same manner as the East Tower alarm configuration.
After the East Tower alarm system was shown to be reliable the West Towers were added to the system with a common high alarm for all four individual towers. Because of the distance and building structure of the hospital the radio signals are sent from the West Tower transmitter to a repeater and then to the East Tower radio. The East Tower transmitter then transmits the signal to the control system.