INNOVATIONS

Top 10 Innovative Engineering Approaches

We're counting down our Top 10 list in INNOVATIONS

#10 - Life-Cycle-Cost Based Decision-Making

#9 - DOAS (Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems

#8 - Radiant Cooling

#7 - DALI Lighting Control Systems

#6 - All-Variable Speed (AVS) Chilled Water Plant

#5 - Web-Based Collaboration and Archive Tools

#4 - Fuel Cells for Building Applications

#3 - Underfloor, Displacement, and Ductless Air Distribution Systems

#2 - A Fresh Approach to Commissioning

#1 - Integrated Design

The principles you live by create the world you live in.
If you change the principles you live by, you will change your world. - Blaine Lee

Are we doing the best job we can to design buildings and energy systems that are good for the world (and good for your business)? Are we designing buildings that support and improve the health of the ecological systems that sustain life? Are you ready to enhance your design principles to change the world?

What Design Principles Have We Been Following?

The traditional building design process is sequential. The architects pass their design to the HVAC engineers to heat and cool, who then pass it to the electrical engineers to power and illuminate. The process is well-refined and safe – repeat the last one, use rules-of-thumb to lower the risk, make it work. It’s expedient for the designers, but not necessarily best for the customer. It’s based on historical utility rates, historical material costs, historical technologies, and historical business practices. You get a building that’s…tailored to the past. The building subsystems don't necessarily work together or work with nature.

Integrative Design Principles

Integrative design is a parallel process to achieve a higher level of performance. The “3 E’s” have been used to describe the philosophy – everyone, early, and everything. Get everyone together early in the design process and explore every alternative.

Everyone includes design, finance, maintenance, construction management, facility management, purchasing, and suppliers. A collaborative approach generates more ideas and a better chance of producing larger successes than a sequential process.

Early shifts more of the design effort to the conceptual phase. You gain the greatest potential to save money and make the largest impact. Rather than bringing people together when the design is nearly finished and attempting to "value engineer" better results, ideas are examined up front. The design process is not necessarily more expensive, but a redistribution of the effort. The early broad participation tends to avoid developing multiple design scenarios and answering numerous uninformed review questions.

Everything involves all aspects of the building over its life cycle – siting, maintenance, housekeeping, water use, energy, parking, transportation, landscaping, waste management, materials, taxes, and comfort. Assumptions and conventional wisdom are challenged. Whole-building modeling is used to quickly evaluate alternatives. Based on hundreds of buildings our firm has audited, we can say there is ample room for improvement!.

Synergism is employed to enhance the economics. For example, by putting more money into the building envelope to reduce the heating and cooling loads (insulation, shading devices, high-performance glazing), the HVAC systems might be 50% smaller. The capital savings from smaller HVAC systems pays for most of the envelope upgrade. The annual energy savings from a better envelope pays for the rest of the envelope cost in a short period of time. With smaller HVAC systems, the cost of employing efficient features is lower. The additional cost of a high-efficiency chiller or a thermal storage system is less because the components are only half as large.

The built environment is positioned to work in conjunction with nature. For example, porous pavement, grassy swales, filtration basins, and green roofs may be used in lieu of curbed parking lots, catch basins, storm piping, and water treatment plants. These strategies reduce runoff, filter out impurities, treat the petroleum, bioeffluents in the runoff, recharge local aquifers, and reduce heat island effects. The results are more aesthetically pleasing and ecologically beneficial.

Integrated design is an essential building block of economical and sustainable facilities. Are you ready to change your principles and improve the world?

ThermalTech Makes the Switch to 3D!

ThermalTech has upgraded from traditional 2D drafting software to 3D object-based design software. We are creating more accurate and understandable project drawings in about the same time as 2D documents. A 3D model of the building and systems generates more detailed sections, isometrics, and renderings to make construction easier and less expensive.

Object-based CAD has changed the way industry professionals think about how technology can be applied to engineering design. Instead of working with traditional lines, arcs, and circles, you work with 3D geometry, or “objects”, like equipment, ducts, and pipes that are representations of real-world objects. The objects know how to interact with other objects.

With a click of a button, we can quickly produce many views of our model including sections, elevations and isometrics. We can size ductwork and calculate pressure losses, generate material lists, and detect interferences. Whenever a change is made to the design, all the consequences of that change are automatically coordinated throughout the project, ensuring that the change is reflected in all of our construction documents. The design tools and inherent coordination help us to refine our designs and improve the overall quality of our work.

Testimonial: On a recent landfill-gas cogeneration project, our customer was so impressed with the value of 3D drawings that he asked for several more views so the construction workers could more easily visualize what they were building. This aided faster completion of the project by reducing interferences.

Project Spotlight

580 Building Chiller Retrofit

ThermalTech just completed another Engineer-Led Turnkey^TM project for the 580 Building, one of the largest office buildings in downtown Cincinnati. The building was constructed in 1970 and is managed by Colliers Turley Martin Tucker. The building owners recognize the importance of remaining competitive in the marketplace by proactively managing operating costs. By updating its core systems, ThermalTech and CTMT are helping to achieve this goal.

PROJECT SCOPE:

Replace chillers containing CFC refrigerant, cooling towers, and several cooling and heating system pumps

Improve system efficiency and reliability

Provide control system to enable easier plant management

Rigging Cooling Tower

FACTS:

17^th floor roof space restricted, new cooling towers had to be selected for size, rigging costs, and performance

Narrow window of time to remove old equipment and get new equipment in operation

Chiller room is on the 3rd floor with the only access via a floor hatch to an alley

Chillers surrounded by active pumps and piping

SUCCESS FACTORS:

Facility Assessment Study identified numerous central plant and HVAC system improvements
Life-cycle cost analysis compared various chiller size combinations, constant vs. variable speed compressors – two 800 ton, constant-speed chillers was the best alternative
Pre-purchased all equipment to accelerate the construction schedule
Chiller configuration and performance selected by life-cycle costing from dozens manufacturer bids
Condenser water flow rate reduced from 3.0 to 2.5 GPM/ton to reduce first cost, energy cost, and equipment size for cooling towers and pumps
Chiller room brought up to ASHRAE 15 standards for refrigerant leak detection and ventilation
Open-protocol, web-based control system coordinates the operation of all systems and can be economically expanded by many vendors to other building equipment

Chillers rigged in pieces to minimize piping disruption
Variable-speed drives on all chilled water and hot water pumps reduce the operating cost compared to previous constant-speed units
All variable-speed pumps use adaptive controls to determine when operating two pumps results in less power consumption than one pump
Cooling tower fans use an optimal control method to minimize the power consumption of the entire plant as a whole
Condenser water filtration system and all-stainless cooling towers reduce maintenance costs
All chemical treatment integrated into digital control system
Peak electric demand reduction of 250 kW and energy savings of 300,000 kWh/yr will produce over $50,000 per year savings

800-ton Chiller

CHW Pumps

Before ThermalTech was retained, a design/build contractor submitted a bid to upgrade the plant. By managing construction costs and system design, ThermalTech was able to incorporate all of the contractor's proposed work plus much more – we replaced 14 pumps and added variable-speed drives, converted two large air handlers to variable flow, added the filtration system, and rebuilt strainers. The value of Engineer-Led Turnkey™ was clearly demonstrated.

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