January Meeting Information

DATE – Tuesday January 11th
TIME – 5:00 pm social, 5:30 pm tour begins, dinner to follow
LOCATION – The Hotel at Kirkwood Center lobby, 7725 Kirkwood Blvd SW Cedar Rapids
FOOD – Provided with paid annual chapter dues (questions – contact jaredr@de-pc.com), $18 otherwise; catered by the Kirkwood Culinary department
We need to provide an accurate head count to the Kirkwood Culinary group for meals!
The first ten people who RSVP will be provided with a free drink ticket; there will also be a cash bar available.
RSVP – By Tuesday January 4th adamb@de-pc.com or 319.841.1944
TOPIC – Facility tour! See description below; be sure to look at some of the eye-catching numbers in the “KEY POINTS”!

The following is a general description of the systems used at the Hotel and Culinary Center:

The system consists of water to air heat pumps and water to water heat pumps connected to a vertical ground heat exchanger, thermal ice storage, high efficiency boilers, air handling units, variable flow pumps, and variable low flow kitchen hoods. The water to air heat pumps provide heating and cooling for the hotel portion of the building including the lobby, conference rooms, and basement. The water to water units serve several functions. Their main function is to provide hot and chilled water to four air handling units. The water to water units also provide 23 degree water to the ice storage system during off hours.

Ice storage allows for the main building cooling to happen during the off peak night hours which saves operating cost. The ice storage system allowed the ground heat exchanger to be smaller which also saved on upfront costs. The ice storage system consists of seven water to water units.

The four air handling units provide air to a series of variable air boxes in the kitchens, offices, and classrooms. Two of the units are capable of providing 100% outside air during peak cooling hours for make-up air to the kitchens. During full operation the Kitchens will exhaust over 57,000 cfm. The kitchen exhaust hoods are variable flow which minimizes the amount of make-up air required at any one time. The VFD’s for the exhaust fans are monitored by the DDC system which then modulates the outdoor air dampers in the air handling unit to match the cfm of exhaust.

The Hotel has a guest room control system. This system allows the Owner to set back the temperature in the guest room when the room is not checked out, and also turns off the lights. When the guest room is rented, the thermostat in the room will ramp the temperature up and allow the lighting to come on once guests enter the room through occupancy sensors and door contacts.

The rest of the facility has lighting control panels that will automatically turn off lights in the Restaurant, Kitchens and Auditorium after hours. The classrooms and office spaces have individual lighting controls per room that turn lights On and Off through occupancy sensors. Exterior lighting is controlled through a photocell and through the DDC system to automatically come on at dusk and turn off at the Owner’s preferred time.

KEY POINTS

• Approximately $140,000 dollars of net savings beyond code base in energy savings per year.
• The estimated total utility incentive for all the implemented strategies is $257,500.
• The estimated payback for all the implemented strategies is 1.3 years.
• Nine ice storage tanks for a net storage capacity of 14,895 gal. Enough thermal storage to provide 240 tons of cooling for 6 hours.
• Implementation of the ice storage strategy has an estimated pay back of 1.7 years.
• Ground heat exchanger consists of 204 300’ deep bore holes. Total active bore hole depth of 60,180 feet.
• The culinary teaching kitchens are conditioned via a custom air handling unit, capable of providing fully conditioned (55 degree air) for space temperature control, and partly conditioned (65 degree air) for makeup air for the kitchen exhaust hoods.
• Kitchen hood controls continually monitor kitchen cooking surfaces. Upon a detection of heat kitchen exhaust fans come on at a minimum speed. Upon detection of smoke, exhaust fans ramp up to full speed. Expected payback for kitchen hood controls system is 0.2 years.
• Seven water to water heat pumps. These special heat pumps have the ability to create simultaneous heating water and chilled water. The building automation system is able to control through the units where heat is taken from and rejected to. The units can reject their heat to the ground heat exchanger, or the building heating water system. The units can also take heat from the ice storage system, the chilled water system, or the ground heat exchanger. This flexibility is accomplished through the use of 70 control valves that the building automation system uses to choose where to pull heat from, and where to reject heat to.
• There are 26 pumps used to move energy within this mechanical system.
• Six high efficient gas water heaters each with 130 gallon storage capacity and gas input of 500 MBH installed in parallel provide hot water for the Kitchen and Hotel. The hot water is stored at 140 degrees and piped to two mixing valves providing precise hot water control even at low flows for the Kitchen and Hotel.
• The hotel can be isolated from the rest of the building’s mechanical system to providing an extra layer of redundancy.
• The walk in cooler and freezer equipment is water cooled and connected to the ground heat exchanger.
• System control of hotel guest rooms for HVAC and lighting.
• Occupancy sensor control of lighting in Offices, Classrooms and miscellaneous areas.
• Energy efficient lighting up to 20% better than code building wide. LED accent lighting in Restaurant and Hotel.