Progress Updates for Our New 'Green' Office - Lesson 13 - Air

Tuesday, January 24, 2012
By Matt Sutter, Chief Executive Officer
In Design

When most people think of a Green Building, energy usage is what comes to mind. How do we condition the air in the space to keep people comfortable and productive? Green buildings certainly do result in reduced energy costs but there are different ways to achieve the energy savings. The SōL Harris/ Day design takes full advantage of the free cool air that is outside the building for 9 months of the year.

In the design of the new SōL Harris/Day Building, many different systems with various costs were considered:

• Electric Heat Pump with Geothermal wells $26/sf = $143,000
• VRF heat sharing system $22/sf = $121,000
• Multiple residential house furnaces with exterior condensing units $15/sf = $82,000
• Rooftop gas heating/cooling units $9/sf = $48,000

The SōL Harris/Day building was determined, through computer simulation, to need cooling in all months except January and February even though we are in the cold climate of Northeast Ohio. Why? All of the computer equipment, lights and people put off heat and raise the air temperature inside the building. This is why, in our old office building, in order to keep from overheating inside the space, we would have to turn on the air conditioning when the outside temperature reached 50 degrees.

Once we understood our building, we were able to design the most effective and efficient heating/cooling system to temper the air for the office. It became clear through the computer simulations, that a majority of the time, the new SōL Harris/Day building needed cool air during the day and then, on cold nights, needed to maintain the air temperature in the space. We needed a way to open up the building during the cool days and then shut it very tightly during the cold nights.

Rooftop units were chosen for this purpose because of their ability to take large amounts of outside air and bring it into the building. Free cool air! We then added extra insulation to the floor, walls and roof to keep the cool air from leaking out during warm days and warm air from leaking out during cold days and nights.

The simulation showed that we will save at least 30% on our energy costs. We may be able to raise that percentage further with a cutting edge control system. This communicates with the local weather forecast to prepare the building during the night for the coming day.

How exciting that the greenest air conditioning system was also the least expensive. That is killing two very large birds with one stone.

Matt Sutter
SōL Harris/Day Architecture
msutter@harrisday.com
330.493.3722


Anatomy of Our Team

Installation
Lakes Heating & A.C., Inc.
330.644.7811

System Design
Lee Good Engineering
330.494.1574

Commissioning
Scheeser Buckley Mayfield LLC
330.896.4664

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