A contractor lays new steam pipes at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, on Nov. 22, 2024. The project is expected to be completed in April 2025. (Rebecca Holland/Stars and Stripe)
VICENZA, Italy — The parking crunch at Caserma Ederle should start to ease around mid-December as work on a wide-ranging $7 million steam pipe project wraps up in places on base that have been most affected.
For a little over a year, parking and streets have been disrupted across the base, most recently near Five Guys and the PX. While the project won’t be completed until 2025, the work will be mostly out of sight after this year.
The project, which started in January 2023, encompasses almost the entire base and entails replacement of decades-old pipes with more efficient ones. According to estimates, the base will realize about $750,000 a year in energy savings as a result.
An old heat exchanger at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, on Nov. 22, 2024. An Army Corps of Engineers project is replacing old heat exchangers with new ones as well as installing additional ones. (Rebecca Holland/Stars and Stripe)
“That translates to real dollars that go to other community projects,” said Callie Carmichael, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vicenza.
Some pipes are about 60 years old and the surrounding trenches have been soaked with rain, destroying the insulation and making them less energy-efficient.
Most of Caserma Ederle’s domestic heating and all its hot water come from steam, starting at a central energy plant near Community Bank. Supply lines branch out from the plant, under the sidewalks and throughout the base.
A new heat exchanger at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, on Nov. 22, 2024. The heat exchangers convert steam to hot water for use around the base and are more energy efficient. (Rebecca Holland/Stars and Stripes)
The new, better-insulated steam lines run to a heat exchanger, which converts steam to hot water and runs that to the buildings.
Transmission is improved because the switch means the steam won’t have to run from the central processing plant all the way to the various buildings.
Over the summer, when heat exchangers were activated in some areas, the base saw an energy savings of 37%, said Lyman Parkhurst, the former energy manager for U.S. Army Garrison Italy.
Signs near the PX at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, warn about construction Nov. 22, 2024. Work on a wide-ranging pipe replacement project has moved across the base since January 2023, causing disruptions to parking and other services. (Rebecca Holland/Stars and Stripes)
“That will go up significantly because we’re hitting heating season,” he said.
The central processing plant had been losing more than 9 cubic meters of water per hour because of leaks. With the work that’s been done so far, the base has seen a 67% decrease in water loss following the installation of new pipes.
