Union pipefitters help homeowners in need prep for cold weather

October 4, 2022 by

Avery Peterson (L) and Jim Westphall take a service call on St. Paul’s east side.

Union pipefitters fanned out across the Twin Cities metro area Saturday to provide free furnace repairs and inspections to 100 low-income, senior and disabled homeowners.

It marked another successful year for Project Heat’s On, the community service initiative sponsored by local pipe trades unions and their signatory contractors.

“I’ve got my talent, and I might as well give my talent back to the community,” said Jim Westphall, a newly retired member of St. Paul Steamfitters Pipefitters Local 455. “I might as well pay it forward.”

Westphall partnered Saturday with his former co-worker at Cities 1 Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, Avery Peterson. For Westphall, it was his 23rd Heat’s On experience. For Peterson, it was the first.

“With our training, this is something we can give back to help people save a little bit of money,” the first-year apprentice said. “It’s nice to give back, and I’ll be back for many years to come in my career.”

Inside a home on St. Paul’s east side, Peterson and Westphall performed a routine maintenance check on the furnace, pulling and cleaning the burners, cleaning the flame rod and replacing the filter.

“You want to make sure the flame rods are clean because if they’re not, the furnace will fail in the middle of winter,” Westphall said.

They also changed the batteries in the home’s thermostat, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.

Before providing free furnace inspection and repairs to Twin Cities homeowners, union pipefitters gather with elected officials and community leaders at a Roseville hotel for the Project Heat’s On volunteer breakfast.

Since its inception in 1986, Project Heat’s On has provided service calls to more than 8,200 households. Union pipefitters have donated more than 37,000 hours of volunteer labor, and with contractors covering the cost of parts and other improvements.

Organizers estimate the value of repairs and service provided through the program is nearly $4 million.

Local 455 and Minneapolis-based Pipefitters Local 539 and their contractors work with Community Action Partnership agencies in the metro to identify homeowners in need of assistance.

“Local 455 has so many proud members that are willing to give back to the community,” Local 455 Business Manager Tony Poole said. “I’m thankful to be a part of such a great organization.”

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Cutting-edge geothermal system keeps Local 455 training center cool

April 4, 2022 by

Tony Poole, St. Paul Steamfitters and Pipefitters Local 455’s business manager, explains how a geothermal system cools the union’s Apprenticeship Training Center in St. Paul.

At its Apprenticeship Training Center in St. Paul, Steamfitters and Pipefitters Local 455 prepares the next generation of union members to work in a changing energy landscape. But the union’s training center itself stands as a testament to the potential for emerging energy technologies to create jobs in the pipe trades for generations to come.

Last summer, Local 455 used a newly installed, cutting-edge geothermal system to cool the facility, located off L’Orient Street and Maryland Avenue. Despite running on a limited capacity while ironing out some mechanical issues, the new system cut the union’s cooling costs by 85%, according to an analysis facilitated by Xcel Energy.

“We think it’s probably going to be the future of cooling,” Local 455 Business Manager Tony Poole said. “It virtually provides our building with free air conditioning. The only costs that we pay are for the electricity to run the pumps that cycle water through the building.”

Poole projected the union will recover the costs of installing the geothermal system within seven years of bringing it online.

“We were looking to promote clean-energy projects that pipefitters and steamfitters work on, so we decided to put a geothermal energy system into our training center and showcase it,” Poole said. “It’s good for reducing greenhouse gases and emissions, but it’s also good to promote the work we do in the clean-energy field.”

Initially, Local 455 considered a traditional geothermal system that would have required digging some 70 wells on the property – at the temporary expense of parking space.

Instead, the union connected with a Minnesota-based company that has pioneered a new kind of geothermal technology, one that embeds a heat exchanger into the aquifer. The pump cycles 52-degree water into a hydraulic cooling system throughout building.

Water enters the training center’s cooling system at 52 degrees and typically exits a degree or two warmer.

Just four wells are enough to cool the 100,000-square-foot facility.

“We’re not taking any water out of the aquifer,” Poole explained. “We’re just using the temperature of the water in the aquifer to cool the water coming in the building.”

The technology is so new that Local 455 needed a variance from Minnesota’s Department of Health before installing it. The union hopes that data collected from the site will help determine whether the geothermal system becomes part of the state’s regular permitting process.

“This is the first building of its kind to use this technology in the world that we’re aware of,” Poole said. “We wanted to be on the forefront of this, and we are.”

The local union isn’t being shy about showing off its new system, either. Local 455 welcomes local and state officials and politicians to tour the facility and learn more about the hydraulic cooling system – in the hopes that the pipe-heavy geothermal approach gets more attention as lawmakers look to invest in and encourage green energy solutions.

“Everybody talks about wind, everybody talks about solar because those are things people can see and understand,” Poole said. “People need to be talking about geothermal, and things like carbon capture and clean hydrogen. Our members want to hear elected officials talking about those technologies.

“All the piping throughout this building is what we work with every day as pipefitters.”

The geothermal cooling system may be just the start of a clean-energy makeover at Local 455’s training hall. Poole said the union has already removed 26 natural-gas-powered rooftop cooling units, installed when the building opened in 2015. That frees up space for a new kind of heating system.

“We’re actually working on quotes with a contractor right now to get thermal solar panels for our roof,” Poole said. “The technology puts a coil inside the thermal panel, which heats the water, and it could supplement the heat from our boilers.”

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Unions move quickly to keep tradespeople safe on jobsites

April 28, 2020 by

St. Paul Pipefitters Local 455 delivered gang boxes filled with cleaning supplies and protective gear – and, yes, toilet paper – to its larger job sites last month. Smaller sites received supplies as well. “We want these job sites to stay open,” Business Manager Tony Poole said. “The best way to have our members continue to work is to keep them safe.”

 

Minnesota’s construction industry has not shut down during the pandemic, but it’s not business as usual on the job site either, as local Building Trades unions and their contractors make adjustments to prevent the virus’ spread and keep tradespeople healthy.

“Any time you work construction, there’s high risk involved. These are risky jobs,” Pipefitters Local 455 Business Manager Tony Poole said. “But this virus, it definitely changes the game.”

The outbreak prompted Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to declare a state of emergency in March, closing most public gathering places and ordering businesses to allow their employees to work from home if possible.

For tradespeople, of course, it’s not.

Construction unions worked with the governor to get their industry on the “essential services” list, allowing work to continue. Now, unions are working to give their members the tools they need to stay safe as they continue building the state’s critical infrastructure.

That starts with education.

The Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council has created a page on its website with an evolving list of resources on the virus and best practices for preventing its spread on the job site. Most craft unions also maintain COVID-19 resources on their local websites.

“We’re sending out communications through our website constantly, just about every day, with CDC recommendations and information about COVID,” Poole said. “And we’re sending mass texts to all members when something is particularly important.”

Unions also are working with their contractors to incorporate best practices into the workflow, LIUNA Local 563 Business Manager Joe Fowler said.

“We’ve been really working with the contractors on social distancing,” Fowler said. “Providing more sanitization stations. Requiring workers to break separately. Forgoing toolbox talks every morning, or doing them weekly instead of daily.”

In some cases, unions are supplying needed equipment to their members directly. Local 455 delivered gang boxes stocked with hand sanitizer, soap, disinfectant cleaner, paper towels, toilet paper, gloves, N-95 masks and more to several large jobsites across the east metro, after hearing from workers concerned about sanitation.

“If you’re working around somebody who’s not wearing a glove, and you’ve got to work on that same piece of equipment?” Poole said. “We want our members to be able to disinfect what they feel they need to disinfect. Rather than wait, the local took it upon itself to supply some of these sites with what our people need.”

Union leaders are taking COVID-19 – and their members’ concerns about the pandemic – seriously, Fowler added.

“We want to keep people working, but we don’t want any of our members working in an environment that they feel is unsafe,” he said. “If they feel that way, they need to reach out. We’re still open for business.”

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