Elevator load effect on one floor of building

[IanVG]

As the title of my post suggests, I am looking into whether or not I should be considering any kind of load (and maybe even pressurization) effect that an elevator will have on one floor of a three story building. The elevator has a separate machine room powering the movement of the elevator.

Some background: I am redesigning the AHU system serving one floor. I have calculated a heat load for the whole floor, but was asked by my boss if I had considered the possible heat load effect of the elevator service on the floor I am working on. There is a single pair of sliding doors that allow access to the elevator and the walls surrounding the elevator itself and the two adjacent chases running on either side of the elevator shaft, run from structure to structure. It seems that air leakage anywhere besides coming through the sliding doors to the elevator would be negligible. Let's say I knew that the air inside the elevator shaft was hot (~90°F) - would the procedure to calc the incoming heat load from the elevator to the floor be getting the amount of conduction through the sliding doors and then somehow estimate the infiltration from the elevator shaft into my space? Is there an example of where someone has applied this kind of procedure, or are there any papers/articles detailing whether or not this needs to be accounted for? And let's say that the elevator shaft was hot, but not hot enough where there were any complaints from users of the elevator nor hot enough to cause any elevator control concerns.

Thanks in advance!

 

[nuuvox000]

You need to meet the requirements of the elevator manufacturer. Nowadays, I typically see elevators with the equipment room at the top of the shaft. Then you can just stick an exhaust fan on top of the shaft and set it to exhaust whenever you decide it should (usually 90°F or above). Sometimes they'll have a room with all of their heat-generating equipment and you can usually use a mini-split.

I've never taken that heat load coming through the elevator doors into account and I'm personally not worried about that. I don't work with razor thin safety factors or incredibly precise load calcs. Even if you are undersized, it would likely only cause issues a few days of the year (at least where I'm located).

 

[MintJulep]

As nuuvox000 has already stated, the elevator shaft is usually exhausted. Then, the elevator car is usually exhausted to the shaft. The result is that when an elevator opens to a floor it sucks in a bit of conditioned air, which has to be made up from somewhere.

Typically this is just one small part of your infiltration and exhaust load.

Just like any other wall, if there is a delta-T between the occupied and unoccupied space then that should go into the envelope load part of your calculation.

Further, doesn't your fire code require an elevator lobby to isolate the elevators from the occupied areas of the floor?