Plumbing/Piping/Pumping
Epoxy Lining Revitalizes Water Piping in University's Largest Dorm Complex
Constructed in 1972, Moody Towers is the largest complex of residence halls on the University of Houston's (UH's) urban campus. Consisting of two 18-story...
Taming Turbulent Piping-System Flow
Turbulent flow churns, spins, tumbles, and creates unexpected havoc in piping systems. If left unchecked, it can shorten the life of critical piping components,...
Specifying Piping Systems
Engineers are under pressure like never before to generate mechanical designs that are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Of course, first...
Grooved Mechanical Pipe-Joining Systems
Like all materials, pipe experiences dimensional changes as a result of changes in temperature, expanding when heated and contracting when cooled. The key to accommodating thermal expansion and contraction in a piping system is to allow predictable and controlled piping-system movement....
Vertical Inline Pumps Save on Space, Installation for University of Miami
The Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami is committed to becoming one of the country's leading bioscience research institutions. It also...
Polypropylene Piping Alternative Fits Nashville Hotel Installation to a Tee
During the fall of 2008, Jimmy Hughes, owner and president of Hughes Bro. Inc., was in the process of bidding a potable-water-piping job at a 65-room, four-story Comfort Suites hotel in Nashville, Tenn. With copper prices at an all-time high, he was looking for a more cost-effective alternative. It was at that time he learned of a solution that had been used successfully in other parts of the world for more than 30 years: Aquatherm Greenpipe. But it was not only Greenpipe's lower cost that caught Hughes' and the hotel owner's attention....
Ground-Source Heat Pumps: Keys to Design, Installation
Amid the current push to “go green” by building high-efficiency, environmentally sound, sustainable HVAC systems, heat pumps — particularly those that use the earth's geothermal energy to serve as a heat sink and source — are generating a lot of buzz. Ground-source heat-pump (GSHP) systems operate like every other HVAC system: They move energy from one place to another. Although that sounds simple, HVAC engineers and designers owe their livelihoods to the complexities. ...
With Help of Water-Source Heat Pumps, Historic Minneapolis Building Reborn
Completed in 1928, Midtown Exchange in south Minneapolis served as a retail and distribution center for Sears, Roebuck and Co. until closing in 1994....
Make It Work!
While working for a contractor overseas about 25 years ago, I often was required to manage construction projects at remote locations. Considering the...
Coalescing Air Separator Removes Entrapped, Entrained, Dissolved Air
Utilizing a conventional air separator that removed entrained air air traveling in a water stream in bubbles that can be seen with the human eye but not...
A. O. Smith Acquires Applied Energy Recovery Systems Inc.
A. O. Smith Corp. announced it has acquired Applied Energy Recovery Systems Inc. (AERS), a leading manufacturer of commercial and residential heat-pump water heaters. ...
Correction
Roanoke, Va.-based Spectrum Design PC was the architectural and engineering firm of record for the repiping of the Bagley Building on the campus of the...
Codes & Standards - April 2009
ASHRAE The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recently announced the publication of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard...
Examining Causes of Pump Vibration
Many vibration problems are a result of interactions among a system's pump, motor, fluid, piping, and structure. This interactive relationship requires...
School Earns LEED Platinum Certification
Chartwell School, an award-winning private school located in Seaside, Calif., has become the first completely educational campus to be awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification....
Mystery Meters
As standard practice, our office conducts a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) for building design projects after a facility has been occupied for a year....
High-Efficiency Radiant Cooling
Radiant-cooling systems have progressed in the last few decades, garnering attention as a comfortable and energy- and material-efficient option.1 Compared...
Mental-Health Institute Replaces Copper Plumbing With CPVC Pipe
Serving as the main patient-care facility on the 17-building, state-run Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute (SWVMHI) campus in Marion, Va., the 102,000-sq-ft Bagley Building was experiencing premature chronic failures of its plumbing system. ...
Parallel Pumping in Industrial Applications
Many system-design ideas that have been proved in commercial buildings, such as parallel pumping, can be applied to industrial facilities. Parallel constant-...
Thermal-Energy Transfer for Commercial Buildings
One of the most rapidly accelerating trends in the commercial-buildings industry — driven by rising energy costs and the growing influence of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System — is the use of water-source-heat-pump (WSHP), or thermal-energy-transfer (TET), systems. ...
Piping-System Design Impacts Project Safety
The first fundamental canon of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Code of Ethics of Engineers states, Engineers shall hold paramount the safety,...
First, Find the Fuse
At about 11 p.m., I received a call from the maintenance manager of a 20-story apartment building. The pumping system had failed, and he could not find...
A Smelly Problem
The vice president of my company had a heating contractor remove his furnace and replace it with two units to provide two heating zones. Soon after the units were put into operation, an objectionable odor occurred whenever the units were used....
Better HVAC Through Circuit Balancing
As many building superintendents would attest, the first indication of an indoor climate problem usually is a complaint from a tenant that a living or...
NEW EQUIPMENT & RESOURCES
Control valves High-temperature characterized control valves meet the challenges of space-restrictive applications, such as unit ventilators and fan-coil...
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