STEAM COIL REPLACEMENT DESIGN

The Behrakis Health Sciences contains two floors of science teaching labs that are provided 100% outside air by a pair of air handling units (AHUs). Built in 2001, there were numerous on-going issues with tripping out on freezestat alarms, which interrupted ventilation to the labs and created significant operational challenges. The University decided to take action by hiring another engineering firm several years later to replace the steam heating coils to reduce the freezestat alarms. Unfortunately, the issues persisted for several more years until B2Q was made aware of the freezestat alarms during our retro-commissioning investigation.
B2Q was tasked with performing an engineering investigation of the coil replacement design and we uncovered several potential issues explaining poor system performance. We were subsequently hired as the mechanical engineers to design a new solution. We completed the complicated design in 3D so that the Contractor could understand project requirements without having to “figure it out in the field.” Since the new coils were installed and started up in the winter of 2018 – 2019, the freezestat alarms have been dramatically reduced and the University is very happy with the results.