Sacred Heart Grade School
1035 Quarrier St. Charleston, WV 25301
Sebastian Hollabaugh
Mechanical Option
Mechanical Depth
DOAS and Chilled Beam Design
By replacing the rooftop unit with a dedicated outdoor air system, a large amount of airflow can be eliminated from the building. This would mean that a lot less air would need to be conditioned, and fan energy would be greatly reduced. It would also reduce the duct sizes, but in turn would require piping to the chilled beams.
Hot Water VAV System
A second simple alternative will be considered. The electric reheat VAVs will be replaced with hot water reheat VAVs. Theoretically it should have a higher initial cost, but provide future savings and reduce energy use. Piping would need to be run to each VAV, similarly to the chilled beam setup.
Because domestic water heaters already exist on each floor, two boiler set-ups will be evaluated. The first will be a single boiler on the 7th floor, identical to the one provided for the chilled beams. A second set-up will utilize combination gas boiler and water heaters on each floor to replace the existing water heaters. A cost and energy comparison will be done to select the better option before piping is laid out. If there is a significant difference, the better option will be modeled.
Breadths
Acoustical Analysis
Being that the building is a grade school, acoustics play a large role in the learning environment. An acoustical analysis will be conducted of the building, including speech intelligibility due to acoustical and sound transmission through partitions of the kindergarten classrooms. An analysis of the structure borne sound of the selected chiller will also be considered in order to determine placement. The mechanical shaft is located by the 6th floor offices, so it will decide if it can be directly above them. It will also affect future classrooms on the 6th floor.
Rooftop Solar Panel Analysis
In total, this building, along with the connected existing school have almost 2000 square meters of surface area. Being that they are also relatively tall compared to surrounding buildings, they provide an ideal area for rooftop solar panels. Existing mechanical equipment and pathways will need to be considered, but an early estimate of 1500 square meters shows that about 294,541 kWh of energy could be produced. This could drastically reduce energy costs in the building, and could nearly make the renovation a net-zero building. The solar energy class AE458 will help to provide an accurate analysis.