Reserve Center — West Palm Beach

Project Overview

The Reserve Center in West Palm Beach, Florida is a 60,000-square-foot facility with classrooms, offices, multipurpose space, a kitchen, a maintenance shop, and ancillary areas. BEED Engineering provided mechanical and plumbing engineering design, LEED energy modeling, and project administration.

The building was designed for energy and water performance, not only for occupancy. An air-cooled chilled-water plant, energy recovery, solar hot water, and a rooftop photovoltaic array were part of the mechanical and plumbing work that supported a USGBC LEED Silver rating.

The Challenge

A Reserve Center combines education, assembly, food service, and vehicle maintenance in one building. Those uses do not share a single HVAC or plumbing profile, and a LEED energy model has to account for all of them.

The design had to:

• Serve classrooms, offices, multipurpose space, a kitchen, and a maintenance shop from one coordinated mechanical and plumbing set
• Provide a chilled-water plant and air-handling systems that could meet cooling load without wasting fan and pump energy
• Recover energy from exhaust air where the occupancy made it worthwhile
• Include kitchen hood exhaust, grease traps, compressed air, and vehicle exhaust for the support spaces
• Support LEED energy modeling and water-efficient plumbing, including solar hot water and a photovoltaic array

The mix is closer to a small campus building than to a single-use office, which is why the engineering could not stop at packaged rooftop units.

BEED Engineering's Scope

BEED provided mechanical and plumbing engineering design, LEED energy modeling, and project administration, including:

• Mechanical engineering for the chilled-water plant, air-handling systems, energy recovery, HVAC controls, kitchen hood exhaust, compressed air, and vehicle exhaust
• Plumbing engineering for water-efficient fixtures, grease traps, and solar hot water
• LEED energy modeling
• Project administration

Electrical engineering for the photovoltaic array was not listed as a BEED electrical design assignment; the roof photovoltaic system is part of the building’s documented energy performance.

Engineering Solutions

Cooling is provided by a 150-ton air-cooled chiller with variable primary flow pumping. Air-handling units with variable frequency drives and single-duct variable air volume boxes distribute air to the occupied spaces. Fixed-plate energy recovery units reduce the outdoor-air cooling load. HVAC controls tie the plant, terminals, and recovery equipment together.

Kitchen hood exhaust, grease traps, and water-efficient plumbing fixtures serve the food-service areas. Compressed air and a vehicle exhaust system serve the maintenance shop. Solar hot water heating panels reduce domestic water heating energy. The roof photovoltaic array is documented as generating an estimated 82,624 kWh annually, with expected annual energy savings of 54%. The project achieved a USGBC LEED Silver rating.

Those systems make the West Palm Beach Reserve Center a high-performance institutional building rather than a conventional 60,000-square-foot classroom block.