Project Brief

Aviation High School is one of New York City's most distinctive career and technical high schools. Founded in Manhattan in 1936 as a school for aviation trades, it has occupied its campus on Queens Boulevard in Long Island City since the late 1950s: a 262,000 square foot building that fills an entire city block, with aviation maintenance shop classrooms, an aircraft hangar and apron where students work on retired aircraft, and an engine test cell. About 2,000 students attend. The school is an FAA-certified aviation maintenance technician school, where students can work toward airframe and powerplant certification before they graduate, and it also operates an annex at JFK International Airport.

For the NYC School Construction Authority, KeRi designed the replacement of the building's original fire alarm system. The Acme control panel dated to the 1950s and had no replacement parts, the building relied on gongs and pull stations with no strobes or area smoke and heat detection, and the elevator recall was out of service. The new Edwards addressable emergency voice/alarm system is run from a fire command center in the main lobby, with data gathering panels in rated closets, a fire department auxiliary radio communication system, and new speaker strobes, strobes, pull stations, and smoke, heat, duct and carbon monoxide detectors throughout. The hangar deluge sprinkler controls, sprinkler tamper and flow switches, elevator recall, fan shutdown, the kitchen hood suppression system and the fuel suppression panel at the engine test cell all report to the new system, and a wireless clock system was added. KeRi is providing construction administration during installation.

When the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded the boiler pit to about five feet, the school's four original fire-box steam boilers, their pumps, fuel transfer equipment and power panels were submerged. As MEP engineer for the flood elimination and heating plant upgrade, KeRi replaced the four 185 BHP boilers with two field-erected 427 HP low-pressure steam boilers, each rated at 16,266 MBH input, with burners that fire No. 2 oil or biofuel. The plant also receives a new boiler feed and chemical treatment system, duplex fuel oil transfer pumps and a fuel oil polisher for the storage tanks, new breeching, and boiler room power panels relocated out of the pit. The same project replaces the building's pneumatic controls with DDC controls and restores the flood-damaged doors, windows and interior spaces.

MEP Engineering Scope

What We Engineered

Fire alarm replacement and post-flood heating plant upgrade:

• Edwards addressable emergency voice/alarm system with a lobby fire command center
• Fire department auxiliary radio communication system
• Hangar deluge, sprinkler, elevator recall, fan shutdown and test cell fuel suppression tied in
• Two field-erected 427 HP steam boilers replacing four flood-damaged boilers
• No. 2 oil and biofuel burners, fuel oil transfer pumps and fuel polisher
• Boiler room power relocated out of the pit, and pneumatic controls replaced with DDC

The Challenge

An occupied, block-long technical school with a working hangar and engine test cell needed a complete fire alarm replacement, and then a new heating plant after Hurricane Ida submerged its original boilers.

Our Solution

KeRi designed a building-wide addressable voice fire alarm that brings the hangar and test cell systems under one command center, and replaced four flooded boilers with two larger biofuel-ready boilers, with the plant's power moved out of the flood-prone pit.