By: Doug Hubley
Carnegie Science Hall’s freshly overhauled air-handling plant returned to service on Thursday, Aug. 9.
A temporary HVAC unit about as big as a shipping container filled in for Carnegie’s penthouse installation during the three-week project.
“We did some initial testing on Tuesday, and we needed Wednesday to get everything else together,” said Chris Streifel, project manager for Bates Facility Services. “Then at 6 a.m. Thursday, we turned off the temp unit, and never had to turn it back on.”
Refitted with new fans, coils for heating and cooling air, and other things that we have a harder time explaining, the system is running “just like it should be,” Streifel said this week. Technicians from Thayer Corp. and Dynamic Air Corp. will return next week for fine tuning, aiming to refine and balance the flows of air into and out of the building.
“That could help control the air pressure in the building a little more tightly,” said Streifel. “Then we’ll do performance checks to confirm that we’ve hit our goals for what the system can do — how much air can we move through it, how much air can we chill, how much capacity do the new coils have?”
The two new coils, one for warming and one for cooling, use water to alter the temperature of air entering the building. The performance tests make use of instruments that measure airflow through the system, and temperatures of both air and water as they enter and leave the system. A mechanical engineer can use that data to calculate system performance. Streifel points out, though, that early testing suggests the system will meet or beat its goals.
Aside from that, the next couple of weeks will be spent training Facilities Services staff to run and maintain the system, and returning research operations that were relocated for the project to their rightful places. Somewhat later, the advent of heating season will necessitate another round of HVAC tests, as Carnegie is warmed by air from the unit. (The water for the heating and cooling coils is supplied independently of Carnegie’s tap water.)
Over the course of three 70-hour (or more) workweeks, the workers from Thayer and the subcontractors on the HVAC job “were amazing,” says Streifel. “They nailed it — really met every one of our expectations, and more.”
Now you’re in hot water: Carnegie must be blushing from all the attention it’s gotten this summer. Even as Thayer and DAC were going hammer and tongs on the HVAC work, plumbers for Damon Mechanical were wrapping up the replacement and expansion of Carnegie’s hot water service.
As we’ve reported, the goal was to both replace deteriorating pipes and add a whole new pipe complex that would convert the system into a recirculating loop, getting hot water to users faster.
Read More >> http://www.bates.edu/news/2018/08/16/campus-construction-update-aug-16-2018/
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