When The Baylor School approached AEED, Inc to design for a new 30,000 sqft state of the art humanities building, it became apparent that traditional building systems might not be the best solutions for our client.

Our solution was to design a new age HVAC system for a historic client. The outside air ventilation requirements in these large assembly type spaces tend to lead to oversized equipment that eventually create problems for the physical plant operators. Problems, such as, high humidity, mold growth, and occupant discomfort to name a few. With our client’s desire to have large open collaborative spaces and achieve the greatest flexibility for future academic endeavors, a Dedicated Outside Air System combined with Variable Air Volume boxes with re-heat that feed active chilled beams being delivered tempered water became the system of discussion. After performing an energy study to compare traditional HVAC systems with our active chilled beam concept, the energy savings made it clear this was the right solution for our client.

By utilizing the central energy plant at Baylor, we were able to expand the chilled and hot water systems to our building to provide the thermal needs for our DOAS, VAV boxes, and chilled beams. By utilizing the inductive nature of active chilled beams, we were able to reduce the total air required to meet the sensible and latent loads, therein reducing the total building energy usage.