Still Rebounding, Detroit Welcomes New Pistons Sports Complex

By RALPH KITTLER, P.E., Dehumidified Air Solutions, Montreal, Quebec

Five years after emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Detroit is on the rise.

Property values are up, new corporate headquarters are coming in and the downtown is thriving. Motor City is earning a new reputation as “the hottest city in America,” says business columnist Daniel Howes of the Detroit News.

Opening this summer, the $50-million Henry Ford-Detroit Pistons Performance Center is another example of the city’s revitalization. With world-class training and sports medicine facilities, it is sure to give an edge to Pistons basketball players, as well as athletes from the general public.

Also offering an advantage is the Seresco NE pool dehumidifier, which provides environment control for the hydrotherapy room. Thanks to a triple threat of pool water heating, heat recovery and robust construction, this unit will save thousands of dollars per year in operating costs.

Based on advice from Seresco’s Detroit-area representative, Paul Mancini of ThermalNetics, an NE-008 dehumidifier was selected for the project. The unit will keep the hydrotherapy room at 85°F and 59% relative humidity, a balance chosen to satisfy the diverse water conditions found in the room’s three pools – a hot tub, a cold pool and a lap pool.

The hydrotherapy room is part of the Pistons’ partnership with local healthcare provider Henry Ford, which is running the sports medicine wing of the complex. The hot tub and cold pool are used for hot-and-cold therapy, a popular rehabilitation tool believed to help athletes recover from muscle injuries while also improving circulation. The lap pool allows athletes to exercise and train by swimming.

But pools can lose up to 95% of their heat through evaporation and maintaining their required temperatures can be expensive. Seresco’s energy-efficient technology reduces these costs and provides a quick payback by recycling that lost heat. The unit is equipped with pool water heating, which recycles heat from the compressor and returns it to the water, keeping the three pools at their required operating conditions for the lowest possible cost.

The unit also recycles heat from the exhaust air and uses it to pre-heat the outdoor air supply through a glycol runaround loop heat recovery system. These two latent heat-recycling features are optional on Seresco equipment and are highly efficient — the pool water heating feature delivers a coefficient of performance around '8'.

“Because of the high efficiency of these two features, the facility will not need to run auxiliary heating for pool water and outdoor air as often,” notes Mancini. “We expect these two features to pay for themselves in energy savings within a year.”

Battling the Elements

Since the dehumidifier is roof-mounted, in a cold climate, there needed to be assurance that condensation wouldn’t be able to form inside the unit where it could pool and promote corrosion, or drip down into the ducting. Its two-inch-thick, double-wall insulated cabinet with thermal break design, protects the unit from this danger.