Dave Smith owns a fire engine red ‘61 Chevy Impala two door hard top, with an aftermarket 327 small-block and Turbo 350 transmission. Smith, the heating manager at Bowker Pinnacle Mechanical in Cedar Rapids, IA, enjoys taking his classic Chevy to car shows.
Smith has been a regular attendee at the Cruisin’ for Camp Courageous benefit car show since the 1990s. Camp Courageous – often called “Camp C” – is a year-round recreational and respite care facility for individuals of all ages with disabilities. The car show has generated a lot of support for Camp C over the years.
In fact, a professional relationship between Smith and Camp Courageous formed at the show and remains strong to this day, some 30 years later. That relationship even predates the merger between Bowker Mechanical, a 95-year-old company, and Pinnacle Mechanical, a four-year-old business.
With boiler specialists and water treatment professionals on staff, Bowker Pinnacle maintains pools and spas at many other facilities, not just Camp C.
Long-standing relationships
Smith carried his relationship with Camp C into his role at the newly formed company, which is well suited to handling any mechanical challenges that may come up. Piping, code welding, HVAC service work: Bowker Pinnacle handles it all in-house.
Over the decades, Smith and the techs working with him serviced and installed all variety of plumbing, heating and cooling equipment at Camp C. The facility includes numerous event spaces, a ropes course, nature trail, mini golf course, a lake for canoeing, field court and a natatorium with two pools.
Smith has been in the trade 43 years, 35 of which have been dedicated to the installation and maintenance of boilers large and small. He’s developed other long-term relationships in the area, including a partnership with rep firm C.H. McGuiness, a fourth generation, 13-person mechanical sales company based in Des Moines.
“I’ve known Dan LaPole, current owner of C.H. McGuiness, for 15 years,” said Smith. “I worked with Dan’s father before Dan was out of school. They are the most reliable contact I have with any manufacturer. If I have questions or supply chain problems, I just call Dan. He’s a great help on both the service and install side of the business.”
Bowker Pinnacle and C.H. McGuiness have teamed up to design and install systems serving ethanol plants, schools, and everything in between. When it came time to replace the existing pool heating boilers at Camp C, C.H. McGuiness was Smith’s first call.
Design team
“Our team had maintained the existing pool heating boilers at Camp C for a long time, but Bowker Pinnacle didn’t install them,” said Smith. “There were two condensing boilers serving the load, but the system’s Achilles heel was that the pool water was pumped directly through the boilers. Pool treatment chemicals degrade stainless steel heat exchangers at a rapid pace, so the original boilers didn’t last as they would have otherwise.”
The first original boiler serving Camp C’s lap pool failed in 2018. Managers at Camp C asked Smith to replace the unit, but deferred replacement of the second boiler until it failed. Smith walked the site with Dan LaPole, and together they navigated a solution to replace the boilers and improve performance. Their plan was to design a solution that could be employed at that time, and again whenever the second boiler failed.
“Dave and I agreed that to provide the highest efficiency and system longevity possible, premium condensing boilers should be paired with titanium heat exchangers,” said LaPole. “The heat exchanger isolates the primary boiler loop from the pool water. Titanium is more resistant to chlorine than stainless steel.”
“We’ve had the Thermal Solutions boiler line for 25 years,” he continued. “Both Dave and I have extensive experience with the Apex model, and it’s been extremely reliable. It’s up to 97 percent efficient and is available in capacities between 399 to 800 MBH, so it was an easy choice for this project.”
In 2018, Smith’s team installed a 399 MBH Apex boiler with a titanium plate-and-frame heat exchanger to replace the system serving the lap pool.
Simple but effective
In 2024, the original boiler serving Camp C’s therapy pool failed. Smith and LaPole visited the site again, knowing that their design from six years prior would offer a fantastic solution, though with a few small changes.
The smallest Apex model was perfect to meet the heat load for both pools. The 180,000-gallon lap pool is maintained at 84°F, and the 76,000-gallon therapy pool remains at 90°F.
During both the 2018 and 2024 retrofits, providing enough physical clearance per Iowa state code and for service work was the primary challenge for Bowker Pinnacle technicians. The pump room where the boiler systems are installed is shared by filtration and water treatment equipment. This was compounded by the fact that the original systems didn’t feature primary/secondary piping.
The larger of the two pools requires 18 GPM on the pool side of the heat exchanger, provided by a Taco 0013. On the boiler side, the flow rate is 32 GPM, using a Taco 1915 circulator. The smaller system, which maintains a higher pool setpoint temperature, needs 19 GPM to the pool and 40 GPM on the boiler side, using a Taco 1911 and 1915, respectively. This approach yields a 20°F delta across the titanium heat exchangers.
“The system we installed in 2018 is very similar to the one we installed in 2024,” said Smith. “Camp C maintenance staff was thrilled with the Apex boiler, so there was no need to change that. The only real difference was the type of titanium heat exchanger we used. In those six years, titanium shell-and-tube heat exchangers became available. I prefer shell-and-tube because they have a lower pressure drop and they’re less likely to clog. They’re also easier to disassemble and clean.”
Temperature sensors on the pool return side of the heat exchanger control the boiler cut-in and cut-out. When return water from the pool reaches setpoint, the pool control system communicates with the Apex onboard controls to shut the boiler off.
“The new boiler systems are much more reliable and provide faster recovery than the equipment that was here previously,” said Corey Mohr, facilities maintenance director at Camp C. “Before the retrofits, if a pool fell by 5°F degrees over the weekend, it would take days to recover. Now it takes about eight hours.”
Partnering with C.H. McGuiness, Bowker Pinnacle has more than doubled the life of the systems by specifying the correct boiler and isolating it with a titanium heat exchanger.
“The initial cost of the heat exchanger tends to sticker-shock some customers, but that generally fades after we explain that they won’t need to replace their pool heaters every few years,” said Smith.
As the only year-round camp in Iowa, the facility sees about 100 campers per week. Regardless of the season, those campers will enjoy all the aquatic activities Camp C offers, while maintenance staff can rest assured that the heating systems are protected from the harsh conditions common to pool heating applications.
# # #
