Multifamily Central Ventilation: A Tale of Two Cities
About this course
Central ventilation systems in multifamily buildings are a vital building system with significant implications for energy, sustainability and occupant health and safety. In this session, we compare and contrast the building stock in Boston and NYC and explore a variety of techniques for restoring and improving these systems. We consider how to evaluate candidates and how to structure the project from commissioning back through design to achieve results based on optimizing energy savings, complying with finance-related and building owner requirements, and how to get these things to just plain work. We build on lessons learned from 10 years’ experience and offer practical recommendations for designing and constructing both new and retrofit systems.
Learning Objectives
- Describe system design considerations, equipment tolerances and field conditions that impact how central ventilation systems actually work
- Identify good candidates for this work and understand how to balance performance, energy savings and project costs
- Specify and set performance objectives during the design phase that will reliably and cost-effectively be achievable
- Understand techniques that can be used to inspect, evaluate, commission and recommission projects such that building performance objectives are achieved and sustained
Course outline
Module 1 • 3 assignments
Multifamily Central Ventilation: A Tale of Two Cities
- Multifamily Central Ventilation: A Tale of Two Cities (01:24:42 hours)
- Presentation Materials (.pdf)
- OPTIONAL: Subscribe to NESEA Communications
Authors
Thomas Holmes
Tom is Senior Project Manager with Aspen Environmental Services in Methuen, MA. He specializes in ventilation related building performance work, including turnkey retrofits of multifamily central ventilation systems. Before coming to the Greater Boston area in 2015, Tom worked extensively in the NYC market implementing ventilation retrofits and as a Senior Energy...
Doug Kumph
Doug Kumph is a senior manager at Petersen Engineering, Inc. Doug worked as an industrial hygienist and chemical engineer before starting his career in the MEP/FP industry at Petersen Engineering from 1999-2006. Prior to rejoining Petersen Engineering (2018), he was the Director of Operations for Cornerstone Commissioning, Director of Operations for Air Solutions and...
John Twomey
John is the Founder & CEO of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Champs. Serving NYC’s mid to high-rise multi-family building stock with holistic performance-based ventilation retrofits, IAQ Champs continues to implement new technology and methods to restore exhaust/supply shafts. We love any and all ventilation problems and have made it our mission to provide healthy IAQ for as...
