This historic airport handles 200,000 flights per year for helicopters, small commercial airlines, private and chartered jets, flight tests, as well as celebrities and dignitaries needing immediate access to the city. With the help of a local energy consultant, the airport acquired three VS1000 RT units to reduce its EUI by 85% to around 14 kBtu/ft2/year.
Reduce Energy The co-founder of this architecture/development/construction firm describes this project as their “most-challenging- to-date.” In addition to meeting the Passive House standard, this 25-unit multifamily building will aim for Net Zero Energy performance, with the assistance of a geothermal ground loop for heating/cooling and hot water; and an 83kW solar array. Passive House is “about 80% better than code,” and this building should have an EUI of about 15 kBtu / ft2 / year. Many other design-build firms might say the Passive House standard is out of reach for new low-income housing, but this firm has made it the norm for their projects.
Multi-Family Residential A law practice created new offices by remodeling an old 1909 historic warehouse. The replacement of the HVAC system involved removing nine aging rooftop packaged units and replacing them with four Ventacity VS1000 Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs) and one VRF system. Lighting, windows and the building envelope were also improved and upgraded. The energy use index (EUI) of the office building dropped from 57.4 to 19.4 kBTU / ft2 / year. Specifically the HVAC portion of the EUI draped by nearly 71%. These kind of dramatic improvements are possible because HVAC is typically the single greatest energy user in an office, and combining a very highly efficient HRV with a VRF heating and cooling system is currently the most energy efficiency type of HVAC system.
Offices A Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the Great Depression has done limited upgrades as budgets permitted. Each 6,000 ft2 dorm building was previously ventilated only when the forced air heating furnaces operated. No mechanical ventilation operated in the summer and shoulder seasons, and it was intermittent in the winter, greatly impacting sleeping conditions. With the focus on healthy levels of CO2, optimal heating system improvements were not done in this pilot. To solve the recurring nightly unhealthy levels of CO2, one HRV per dorm was installed, four in total. The HRV is programmed with a combination of demand-based controls via a CO2 sensor within a certain PPM range, programmed with time / day-of-week scheduled operations. This will ensure healthy levels of CO2 for residents.
Schools