Design Journal Entry - Module 10

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Aigbekaen, Jovan

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Module 10 - Plumbing Systems

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Created

Jan 6, 2025 12:34 AM

Last Edited

Jan 6, 2025 12:34 AM

Created by

Glenn Katz

Plumbing System Challenges:

• In my initial design, the bathrooms in the western wing were not stacked on top of each other on each floor (the ground floor bathrooms were located in a different location compared to the L2 and L3 stacked bathrooms). This made the initial plumbing model convoluted, complex, and spatial inefficient, which would have resulted in more material usage, increased clashes with the structural systems, and a potential more extensive MEP overhead footprint. As such, I elected to reconfigure the ground floor plan to move ensure that the all bathrooms were stacked over one another on each floor
• The previously bathroom designs did not incorporate “wet wall” wall cavities to host plumbing piping, so I had to adjust my designs to make room for these wall cavities. Moreover, given the specific geometry and orientation of the bathrooms in the western wing, I implemented a wet wall cavity that ran along the rear (southern) wall of both bathrooms in lieu of the conventional adjacent wet wall cavity, as the rear wall was where the plumbing fixtures were to be placed.
• The changed described above are depicted in the plan image below:

Western Wing bathrooms location change + wet wall cavities

Plumbing System Elements:

• My plumbing system contains piping infrastructure elements for hot water, cold water, and sanitation
• The following plumbing fixtures are located in each bathroom
• Toilets:
• cold water, and sanitation pipes
• Sinks:
• hot water, cold water, and sanitation pipes
• The layout of adjacent bathrooms were mirrored to simply piping configurations.

Piping Systems:

• The hot and cold water are sourced from a central municipal plant, with piping infrastructure in the MEP room connecting the building to the municipal plant. Each MEP room acts as the terminus for the sanitation systems in the two building wings (east and west). The sanitation termini connect to the municipal waste waster treatment system.
• The wet wall cavity adjacent to each bathroom cluster houses the vertical rises for each of the 3 plumbing pipe types. The wall cavity is 1’ wide to allow for ample space between the different pipes and the risers. The diameters for the different pipe are listed below:
• hot water: 1”
• cold water: 1”
• sanitation: 4”
• The hot water, cold water, and sanitation branches that stem from these pipes occur at different elevations to avoid clashes. The sanitation piping from the plumbing fixtures to the riser is located at or below the floor slab. The sanitation pipes from each of the plumbing fixtures are directed towards the MEP rooms of each wing through a series of sloping main pipes at a slope of 1/4” per foot, with each pipe connecting to the vertical riser which directs flow from the upper floors down to the ground floor.

(top) Eastern Wing wall cavity; (bottom) Western Wing bathroom wall cavity

(top) Western Wing Bathrooms Section - East; (bottom) Western Wing Bathrooms Section - North

(top) Eastern Wing Bathrooms; (bottom) Western Wing Bathrooms

Additional Plumbing System Challenges:

• Given that the western wing MEP room was not directly adjacent to the bathrooms in wing nor the wet wall cavity, a unique solution had to be developed to direct the sanitation pipes to the eventual reach the MEP. Rather than having a separate horizontal connection between the bathrooms on a given floor and the MEP room, I decided to utilize a single horizontal connection. To do so, I extended the vertical sanitation riser in the wall cavity to terminate just below the structural foundation. From this point, I connected the riser to a horizontal pipe that was then directed at a slope of 1/4” per foot to travel from the bathrooms towards the MEP room. This solution avoided the case of having sanitation pipes in the ceilings between occupied rooms and spaces. The depth of the vertical riser protrusion below grade was set to minimize the amount of excavation required to install the sloped pipe will still adhering to the sanitation infrastructure codes.

More Updates - Changes to HVAC Systems:

• Wall diffusers to meet atrium cooling requirements: Added wall supply diffusers in atrium spaces to satisfy the cooling conditioning requirements that I had previously omitted in fulfilling. The number of diffusers required in each spaces was determined by the total spatial air flow requirements (cfm) as determined in a previously computed load simulation.

1. In the previous load simulation, I assigned a simulation space to the atriums at each floor which resulted in a unique air flow value in cfm for each floor of the atrium. To work around this simulation decision which inhibited determining the required the spatial cfm value to utilize for the entirety of each of the atrium spaces, I adopted the strategy of selecting of selecting the highest cooling cfm value generated from each of the floor values. The only exception was the eastern atrium, in which I used the sum cfm value as this sum was comparable to the cfm value for the northern atrium which is of a similar size and configuration as the eastern atrium.
2. Wall diffusers were placed at an elevation of 10’6” to align with the diffuser height of the overhead supply fixtures. This simplified the duct connections

• Heating/Cooling + Ventilation package equipment updating and positioning adjustments
• The HVAC system for this design is now an outdoor AHU coupled with an outdoor air source heat pump. The heat pump provides heating and cooling for the hot and cold coils in the AHU. The AHU facilitates the conditioning of the supply air to the desired set point temperature

AHU + Heat Pump Package diagrams




• The coupled AHU and heat pump equipment were removed from the central rooftop and from the MEP rooms respectively and placed in new outdoor locations adjacent to the egress shafts in each wing, which themselves are in relative proximity to the MEP rooms of the respective wings. enclosed HVAC sheds will be modeled to elegantly house the outdoor equipment and stifle the noise pollution they produce when operating.
• The duct work to connect the outdoor units to the indoor vertical supply and return shafts for each wing were modeled. The ducts were positioned to limit the amount of detraction from the overall aesthetics of the facade elevations.