Commercial Construction & Renovation

MAY-JUN 2016

Commercial Construction & Renovation helps our subscribers design, build and maintain better commercial facilities by delivering content to meet the information needs of today's high-level executives.

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112 COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTION & RENOVATION — MAY : JUNE 2016 FEDERAL CONSTRUCTION • SPACED OUT assistance and approval from the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. This funding scheme allowed DFS to use future energy and operational savings to fnance the infrastructure improvements upfront. Solutions improve effciency and performance A wide range of solutions were chosen to help DFS reach its effcien- cy, sustainability and occupant comfort goals in several phases of the project. Upgrades to the buildings included: • Airfow rebalancing to ensure that the laboratories were not over-ventilated and wasting energy to heat and cool the excess air. A safety consultant helped determine that ventilation rates could be safely reduced in the labs without affecting indoor air quality or occupant health and safety. • Fume hood retrofts for the installation of high-per- formance, constant-volume hoods in the labs. The previous hoods required more airfow to operate effectively, while the new hoods operate more effciently. • Optimization of existing controls systems in each building. These changes to how the heating and cooling systems operated help improve effciency and reduce energy consumption when the buildings are empty. • New heating plants in the labs in Richmond and Norfolk facilities, along with a new summertime boiler in the Roanoke lab, to improve heating plant effciency and performance and reset the life cycle. • Installation of a new Trane water-cooled chiller at the Richmond laboratory. The facility previously required two 650-ton chillers running at near maximum capacity on hot summer days. With the project upgrades, the building cooling load was reduced from 1,300 tons to 900 tons, allowing for installation of a new 270-ton Trane centrifugal chiller with ad- justable frequency drive (AFD) to handle the cooling load during milder parts of the year when the existing machines would be too large to operate without excessive cycling. An AFD also was installed on one of the existing chillers to allow it to run at lower loads more effectively and improve overall effciency. • Installation of two new Trane chillers at the Norfolk facility to refect the signifcantly reduced cooling load in the building. The smaller chillers effectively meet the new cooling requirements and incorporate variable speed pumping into the plant. • Reverse osmosis water purifcation upgrades at the Richmond and Norfolk facilities. The new systems pro- vide greater effciency and require less electricity and water to provide the same amount of purifed water.

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