Grace Church Blesses New Boiler!

On Sunday, September 9, 2012, the Rt. Rev. Gayle Elizabeth Harris, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts blessed Grace Episcopal Church's new boiler during her official visitation to the parish.  "Almighty God, your Holy Spirit equips the church with a rich variety of gifts to accomplish your will and mission in the world. Today we celebrate the most practical of gifts, the gift of boilers to warm our church, that it may serve as the gathering and meeting place for our congregation and the community," she prayed as she blessed the boiler.

The $100,000 project completed replaces the church's old failing oil system with high efficiency gas condensing boilers. This boiler project will both save the church money on energy costs, and dramatically reduce the building's carbon footprint. MedfordWellington Service, of Medford, installed the new boiler. This boiler replacement is part of Grace Episcopal Church's historical restoration and building greening project funded by the church's 2011 Capital Campaign.

Trip to the Top

On Thursday, August 30th, our contractor Jay Murray led a tour to the top of our Bell Tower for Wes Foote, Jr, the Reverend Noah Evans, Jonathan Hunt, Allison Andrews and Eva Englert.  Jonathan took the above video, and see below for our photo slideshow.

MEANWHILE, IN THE NETHERLANDS...From Minister of Music Ruth Roper

MEANWHILE, IN THE NETHERLANDS...

Two weeks ago Noah shared with me the story of the damaged bell and its pending re-casting; he was curious what I thought, both as a history buff, and as Grace's musician, who will be playing these bells sometime soon. While it's disappointing not to have all of the bells conserved in their pristine original form, I actually find it kind of cool that this one bell is having this incredible adventure. From Medford, to the U.S. heartland... then off to Asten, half a world away in the Netherlands, to the premiere bell foundry in the world... for melt-down, and like the phoenix, to rise from the ashes into a digitally-exact replica. Wow! And isn't our faith a lot about renewal and rebirth?

"I almost wish one of us could fly over there to witness it," Noah mused. Well, as it happens, my niece Joanna was in fact going to be in the Netherlands that very week! So, in a flurry of e-mails, I arranged to have her make the 2-hour side trip to the Royal Eijsbouts Foundry (http://www.eijsbouts.com/), to witness the event on our behalf. She was to be met at the train by Joep, the Dutch artisan overseeing this project, and given a tour. Our bell was not scheduled for its recasting until after Joanna's visit, but on the day of her visit she would be able to see its wax cast, and was invited to observe a bell for the Notre Dame in Paris being poured. Joanna, herself an artist who works with molten glass, not to mention always up for an offbeat adventure, was thrilled for the opportunity. After the foundry visit, she planned a visit to the associated "Klok & Peel" ("Clock & Bell") museum in Asten. (http://www.museumasten.nl/) I got so jazzed up reading these materials that I actually considered flying over there myself! (Curious? Read this: http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=54970#.UEgLRiLduSp)

I've been hoping to hear more from her about how the visit went -- so far I've just heard that it was "awesome!!" and received this picture of her next to a bell twice her size. (Her time in Holland was bnef, as she was en route to Israel to begin a program there.) Hopefully we'll hear more from her about her day with our phoenix-bell, so watch for future posts.

The scaffolding reaches the top!

This week the scaffolding has reached the top of the Grace Episcopal Church Bell tower. It is quite and impressive site to the the work climb to the top of the tower.



Our masons are almost done with the front vestibule of the church, when they are done, They will start work on the interior of the bell tower until the scaffolding is ready for them to begin work on the exterior of the tower. The High Street door of the church may be closed for a couple of weeks.




The Bell company sent the bell to the foundry in the Netherlands to have it repaired (see the last blog post for the story of the cracked bell). The foundry (Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry) can't fix it, but will take a mold of our old bell and cast one that is identical. They will also use digital technology to shape the new bell's sound to exactly replicate the old bell's sound. They plan to take our old bell and melt it down and use the same bronze to fabricate the new one. All of this is at no additional cost to us. There will be both material and metaphysical links between the old and new bell!

Right now the bells are scheduled to come back the begging of October, and we hope to have the entire project completed by early November. The work seems to be on schedule at this time.

Phase II Tower Work Begins

The Phase II Restoration work on the Grace Church bell tower has begun!  We anticipate that this work on the Bell Tower and the High Street foyer will continue until the first week in November.

Our General Contractor, Murray Brothers has demolished and removed the internal first floor of the bell tower.

And the second floor platform (which will not be replaced).

The floor was then filled, and will have new concrete slab added later.

Our masons are working to match the mortar color and consistency with the building -- 

You can follow our masonry subcontractors perspective on this project on their own blog found here. 

We also have learned, unfortunately, that one of our bells developed a hairline crack as the bell contractors were working on it.  The bell is being shipped to the foundry in the Netherlands in order to be repaired.  You can see the crack in the photo below radiating down from one on the bolt holes.  We are told that the crack does not effect the part of the bell that produces sound, and will be able to be fully repaired.

Replacing Our Ancient Boilers

Compared to the rest of the historical buildings the boilers and furnaces are not that old, but they were at the end of their lifespans at 40, so as part of the overall restoration of Grace Church, we are replacing them with high efficiency natural gas boilers and water to air heat exchangers.

The benefits of the new boilers are many, but here are a few of my favorites:

• Saving Energy - We expect to save 100,000 kBTU each year, saving us thousands of dollars and reducing our environmental impact by 18 metric tons of CO₂ every year.
• No More Oil - We no longer have to deal with oil deliveries, the volatile price of oil and having oil tanks on site.  What a relief!
• No More Combustion in the Church - with the removal of the natural gas furnaces and their replacement with water to air heat exchangers and fan coils, all of the combustion for the heating system now takes place only in the boiler room and not underneath our beautiful sanctuary.

Here are some pictures from the boiler upgrade work that Medford Wellington has been doing.

Before & Now

Old inefficient boilers

Old Oil Boilers Piping

New High-Efficiency Natural Gas Boilers

Old Oil Tanks

Old Furnaces that mostly failed this Winter

New boilers wearing blankets because it is cold today

Old ducting and furnaces for recycling

Pipes and fittings to be installed for new heating system

Bags of fittings for new heating

More to come...

Bell Removal!

The bells were removed today from the Grace Episcopal Church bell tower, and sent to Chime Master in Lancaster, Ohio for restoration.  The entire operation took two days, and was an amazing feat.  The bells will be restored, fitted with new clappers on a new metal frame in Ohio, and then disassembled and brought back and reassembled inside our bell tower after the tower has been restored.  We hope to have the bells back this fall.