Glenn KatzThe first thing I did for this module was fix up a lot of the coordination issues that I had after doing the last module. I wanted to make sure these didn’t stack up, since I am sure waiting will just make it worse.
In regards to the HVAC system, since the location is New York City, the weather is pretty variable but evenly split since it gets hot during the summer and cold during the winter. Thinking about solar loads, after doing the analysis from one of the first modules, most of the sunlight hits the west and south walls. I was able to account for this early on in the design by isolating these areas as natural light corridors. This should help prevent the main exhibit spaces from having too much variability in the temperature, leaving most of the load to be within the corridors. I also made sure I included utility shafts in the initial design, which should allow for some flexibility.
For the systems, I decided I want to go for a standard air-based cooling system using ducts. I figured that since these ducts will be present for this system already, the heating system can also use these same ducts since both systems will not be active at the same time. AHUs have plenty of room to fit in the mechanical/storage spaces on each floor.
Below is a screenshot of the final product
The first thing I had to do was assign spaces to all of the indoor rooms, and assign the correct space types so that the load analysis would be done properly (lobby, exhibition space, restroom, etc). I did not include the outdoor spaces in this.
I then generated the heating and cooling schedule:
The lobby area is definitely the most intensive. Looking at the detailed breakdown, this is due to the walls being glass and the extremely large open space requiring lots of lighting. This will definitely be something to monitor to see if any properties need to be changed to ensure that the required system remains reasonable. For most cases, cooling requires the larger CFM. There are only a couple cases where the heating airflow is higher.
I then used this to create a space schedule to determine how many air terminals are required per space. For now I am assuming 500 CFM per terminal.
Using this I placed all the required air terminals for each space. The only place I could not place them was the 2nd floor exhibition space since it has no roof. To make up for this, I placed more at the top of the atrium, which is above that space. The lobby looks a little crazy with 21 ducts required but they managed to fit. I also did my best to place them near windows when possible. Lastly, I was unsure if stairways also required air terminals. I left them out for now, but may go back and add it after TA feedback.
For the ducts, I placed them at 11’-10” top dimension, since this should be clear of all of the structural beams that are 2 ft deep, with a story height of 14 feet. I have mechanical rooms to place all of the AHU’s except for level 1. This required me to place 2 in the level 2 room and utilize the shaft.
Below are screenshots of all the floors.
Level 1
Level 2 (for some reason space names were not showing up)
Level 3
Level 4
The main challenge was getting all the spaces to be properly defined. I had a lot of trouble with errors within Revit and it made this take far longer than I expected it too. For example you can see that they refuse to appear on Level 2.
Working out duct placement was also a challenge, and I am sure there are layouts that are 300% more efficient then what I came up with. Also, I did not do all of the math to optimize duct capacities. I tried to be conservative and oversize by using the largest size recommended when it seemed like it would have to handle lots of flow. This was still an interesting activity, though, since it was not something I have ever thought about.
In terms of conflicts to be sorted out, since this week I spent a lot of time fixing coordination issues, things seem to be working out okay with ducts being under structural beams. If anything, there is actually too much space and the ducts can be moved up higher. The only comment is that everything is currently exposed, so I will have to add some sort of drop ceiling to hide all of the beams and ducts. Figuring out a final ceiling height later on will also help determine if I should move the ducts up or not.