what is best application for heating and cooling for resorts? 1

[mackistired]

Hi,
I have been working with many different types of a/c systems but my main work was in cooling down places. Now I have a resort to quote but they need to have the option of heating and cooling not cooling only. I heard about boilers and my question is could chillers and boilers be used in one project for heating and cooling purposes? if yes, do I have to run 2 separate closed loops piping network one for heating and one for cooling? I have to say that heat pumps and/or VRVs are not desired for this project.

Thank you

Mack

 

[MintJulep]

Chillers and boilers, hot and cold together?

Wouldn't that be sort of like matter and anti-matter?

I would think that you'd at the least create a black hole at your project site and at the worst destroy the universe.

 

[mackistired]

As I have stated, I never worked with heating before. Am not sure what is a boiler? From the name I would think it is an equipment for generating heat. Please describe to me what you would you install in a project requiring heating and cooling?

 

[jistre]

Hmm. If you've never heard of a boiler or hydronic heating, my advice to you is to suggest to your employer that they bring someone on who knows what they're doing. If this is a large resort, misquoting the project can be extremely expensive for your company. Worse, if the job is let and indoor air quality issues pop up because of inexperience, I can guarantee you a resort is going to come looking for someone's rear. Not only is that a satisfying area to chew on when angry, it's also typically where the wallet is. When people won't go to the moldy, smelly resort, someone's going to be looking to replace that income with a nice, fat, lawsuit.

Just my thoughts.

 

[msquared48]

Try a heat pump system.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask

 

[MintJulep]

A "resort" isn't a type of building. It isn't really anything standard, it might be a big building, or a bunch of small buildings, or a few medium building and some small buildings, or a big building and some small buildings, or really any combination of building types and sizes, so it's going to be impossible for anyone to give you any meaningful advice based on what you've told us so far.

 

[QualityTime]

I would agree with msquared48...look at a heat pump and look at using groundwater as the source. This will keep the facility at exactly the temperature you are looking for all year around. You may need to add supplemental heating or cooling depending on the load on the system. Look up heat pumps on the internet and then talk to suppliers

 

[317069]

what do you mean by" they need to have an option of heating and cooling"
Could you please tell us what the oepration plan is?
boilers are equipment to generate either hot water or steam.

 

[hollandhvac]

I can only say, I have seen chilled water systems for cooling purposes, but connected in the system was a small boiler for heating purpose. I do have to admit it was in Saudi where the need for heating is not very high and I have only seen it on an old design drawing (now 30 old).
I have not seen it actually work.
My 2 euro cent.

 

[mackistired]

Well,
As I have said, we need to be able to supply residents with both options of heat and cool at any given time. Is this practical? Their are times in the year where some residents will need to have the heat mode on versus some others who would like to have the cool mode on. Could this be realized at the same time with centralized system? I know heat pump would give the individual option but we are looking into chillers, boilers or a similar centralized condensing uint system. What you guys think?
Also, Jistre mentioned about indoor air quality and mold issues, can you expand on this a little. Thank you

Mack

 

[MintJulep]

Well if you need to be able to make hot and make cold at the same time then you are going to need a pipe with hot stuff and a pipe with cold stuff.

When you use the cold stuff to make some cold you end up with warm stuff.

When you use the hot stuff to make some hot you also end up with warm stuff.

Of course the warm stuff made out of the cool stuff, and the warm stuff made out of the hot stuff might be differently warm.

So you could either mix all of the warm stuff together in one warm stuff pipe, or you could keep the hot warm stuff and the cold warm stuff each in their separate pipes.

But sometimes when it's not so hot and not so cold you don't really need to make cold or hot, you could get away with just making warm. So in that case it's possible to just use the warm stuff that you made already.

Of course running hot stuff pipes and cold stuff pipes and hot warm stuff pipes and cold warm stuff pipes costs a lot of money. So it might be less expensive to build with only one mixed warm stuff pipe.

But you need to balance that against the operating costs of making hot warm stuff hot again and cold warm stuff cold again against the costs of making part of the mixed hot stuff hot again and the rest of the mixed warm stuff cold again.

And that's just the stuff side of the equipment. There's a bunch of things that you need to consider on the air side too.

 

[btrueblood]

That should be a FAQ, Mint.

 

[317069]

Where is the project location?
You mentioned something about Saudia Arabia, is that the project location?
What about the electrical power source at the project location,is it expensive or not?
Air quality in simple word means that you have to provide a certain amount of fresh air to the space to keep a low level of the CO2, this amount depends on the building type and occupation, this amount can be measured either by the cfm per square feet[l/sec.sq.m] of building area or by cfm/perso[l/sec.person].

How big the building is?. if you give some more details about the building such as total area, number of floors, internal layout of each floor, that could help to specify a suitable system

 

[KiwiMace]

If heating is a rare and special thing, just stick an electric baseboard heater in each room.

If this is a LEED Platinum project: Leave it unplugged. Only the truly cold will bother to find it and plug it in. Worth a point or two.

 

[IRstuff]

Not sure why you think there might be an issue of practicality, given that almost all hotels and vacation resorts I've been in have in-room heating/cooling controls.

Perhaps a jaunt to the local Holiday Inn might be in order...

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[marcoh]

Simple answer is most likely you will need 2 seperate systems, one for hot stuff, one for chilled stuff (stuff is now a 'technical' term, lol).

Do a google search on 4 pipe systems and you will find answers

 

[mauricestoker]

If you have only a minor heating load, consider using a heat recovery chiller.

 

[Ziggypump]

I'm with Msquared on this one. Heat pump system may be the way to go. Depending on where this place is located (still don't know) and the annual temperature, you could be over sizing your system by a HUGE amount.

What are the average high and low temps?

You state that an option for heating needs to be available to the customers. How many at one time would be requesting heat? If you don't know this than it would be very easy to either over size or under size the systems.

Let's assume that unit ventilators are going to be used for heating and cooling. A hot water and cold water coil will be needed in every room. You would need a hot water pump system large enough to supply water to every ventilator. I know that with VFD's and sizing for diversity that's not the case, but the worst case scenario could still be a lot of unit ventilators that will not be used in the off season, and a VFD will only bring the flow down so far. Now you're wasting energy just pumping water in a loop. Not to mention this is a 4 pipe system (2 pipes for chilled water supply and return, 2 pipes for hot water supply and return), and that's a lot of piping.

How would you activate the boiler? Outdoor reset? Continuous operation?

Now if you go with a heat pump system, you could have a 2 pipe system, and every room will have their choice of heating or cooling, with minimal impact to the flow of the water, and might even get some regenerative energy (heating one room could supply energy to cool the next room, and the chiller is bypassed altogether).

Or you could always go with a cooling coil with electric heat.

It doesn't matter if you would like to use a boiler or not. You need to make the decision based on the type of system that's going to be used, and the heating/cooling capacities of the building(s). Not enough information has been provided for a really helpful answer to your question. Too many unknowns to be helpful, and the fact that you didn't know what a boiler was, is a bit scary, from the point of designing a boiler system.

 

[willard3]

I would suggest you hire an Engineer who is familiar with both heating and cooling systems.

If, when you are sued, you explain that you designed an HVAC system based on recommendations from a web board, everyone in the courtroom will be laughing up his sleeve.

 

[EnergyProfessional]

I think this discussion misses the most important aspect (unless I just don't see it): what is the location / climate? an air source heat pump system (and VRF is not much different) only works well where you don't have less than 10-15 °F, ideally not below freezing.

And yes, someone familiar with HVAC design should be involved.