Daweit Gebru 12/6/2012 Environmental Systems I HVAC Paper I am designing a new office building for a building developer.

I am designing and developing this building at the lowest possible price with a low first cost which initially maximizes the profit of this building. The office building is a 10 story office building. When looking into HVAC units, a split system is definitely worth looking at. A splitsystem air conditioner splits the hot coils from the cold coils of the system. The expansion valve and the cold coil, is generally placed into a furnace or an air handler. The air handler blows air through the coil and routes the air throughout the building using a series of ducts. The condensing unit, lives outside the building. Inside the condensing unit is a fan, to blow air through the coil, along with a weather-resistant compressor and a control logic to manage the temperature and pressure going throughout the coil. This approach has evolved over the years because of its low-cost and also it normally results in reduced noise inside the house. When dealing with large buildings, the condensing unit normally lives on the roof and can be as big as a car, even bigger sometimes. The system can start running problems however now. There will be lubrication problems especially if you have to run the pipes through long distances. And you will not be able to keep good management of the system because of its great lengths and the amount of time it would take to find any problems. In a chilled-water system, however, you would not have to worry about it because thanks to the way it helped the water travel through the system. After being chilled in the water tower and air conditioner on the roof or possibly behind the building, it is pushed through the building which has sets of air handlers throughout. This would be greatif it didnt use so much energy and cause so much pollution with its CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons. So what is to be done now? There are other ways to heat and cool a building such as using the earths surface or geo thermal heating or GeoExchange. A closed-loop system could be used using the geo-thermal method. Some type of plastic pipes, filled with antifreeze solution are buried underground. During the winter, the solution collects heat from the earth and carries it through the system and into the building. During the summer, the system reverses itself to cool the building by pulling heat through the pipes to deposit it underground. Due to the rising costs of electricity and the sudden shift in helping our environment, goe-thermal is the smartest and possibly safest descision. Large commercial buildings and schools often use vertical systems because the land area required for horizontal loops would be prohibitive. Vertical loops are also used where the soil is too shallow for trenching, and they minimize the disturbance to existing landscaping, which in turn helps stop us from disturbing our environemtn. For a vertical system, holes (approximately four inches in diameter) are drilled about 20 feet apart and 100 to 400 feet deep. Into these holes go two pipes that are connected at the bottom with a U-bend to form a loop. The vertical loops are connected with horizontal pipe (i.e., manifold), placed in trenches, and connected to the heat pump in the building. Geo-thermal units are the most energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive of all space conditioning systems.

The basic principle behind geo-thermal cooling is to use this constant temperature as a heat source instead of generating heat with electricity. The building developer can save up to thirty to fifty percent on their cooling bills by replacing their traditional HVAC systems with ground source heat pumps. The initial costs can be up to thirty percent more, but that money can be recouped in three to five years, and most states offer financial purchase incentives. Another benefit is that the system lasts longer than traditional units because it's protected from the elements and is immune to theft. This selection would differ from designing a building for an institutional building developer due to fact that an institutional building requires a low operating cost. Therefore, a water source heat pump would be a better selection for the institutional client. A Water Source Heat Pump (WSHP) system is one of the most efficient, environmentally friendly ways to heat and cool buildings because each unit responds specifically to the heating or cooling load of the individual zone it serves. These systems are ideal for larger building infrastructures the institutional office building. The benefits are outstanding - excellent comfort, better efficiency and lower operating costs. A water source heat pump system shares the ability to move energy from where it is not needed to where it is needed with other sophisticated HVAC systems. The energy is moved in water, which is very effective and requires minimal transport (pump) work. Other HVAC systems capable of moving energy around a building include fan assisted VAV and dual duct, dual fan VAV. However, these systems move the energy in air rather than water, which requires ceiling plenums, ducts and fans. In a WSHP system, high efficiency, self-contained units can be placed in virtually any location within a building and connected via a water loop. Heat is added and rejected from the loop using a boiler and cooling tower, or by using natural sources such as the ground, a well or a pond. In this case, the water source would be extracted from a well which is built underground near the institutional building. Each unit responds only to the individual cooling or heating load of the individual zone they serve. This results in close control over the temperature and humidity in each building zone, which leads to excellent occupant comfort. Energy use is kept to a minimum because units will generally only operate when there is a call for heating or cooling in their specific zone. In fact, in warmer environmental conditions, the units may operate for only a short period of time during occupied hours. Systems that cannot move energy around the building tend to use electricity to cool one part of the building, and natural gas or another source to heat other parts of the building. While they are not necessarily simultaneously heating and cooling a specific space, the overall building experiences simultaneous heating and cooling. Geothermal (ground-source or water-source) heat pumps achieve higher efficiencies by transferring heat between the institutional building and the ground or a nearby water source. Although they cost more to install, geothermal heat pumps have low operating costs because they take advantage of relatively constant ground or water temperatures.