bigAlittlee
Mechanical
- Feb 10, 2010
- 13
In the few years I've been doing MEP work, I've done plenty of sizing and modeling calcs, equipment selection, etc., but until recently I haven't been faced with the task of laying out mechanical rooms.
I understand this isn't that hard and it's not that I can't do it, but every time I do one of the old timers says "yeah, that would work fine, but this way would be better" and of course, they are usually right. It feels like so much more of an art than a science to me that I feel like it may be the most challenging part of my job so far as crazy as that may sound, but I get pretty stuck on doing things the best way possible. Usually my thought of "best" is defined by a high or a low number depending on what I'm talking about.
I work large high rise projects that are always new construction. A chiller plant I have in front of me now for example has 5 chillers, 6 heat heat exchangers, and 14 pumps squeezed into odd shaped spaces that are not what us mechanical engineers would like to see, but they match the space requirements we provided, and we're stuck with making it work. I have a hard time imagining where the pipes go and what choices I could make (pump configurations etc.) to make something that seemed impossible work. Projects are never local either, which makes everything a lot more difficult. When you never see your own work in person, it's hard to know if you are doing a bad job. When I say that I mean regarding the facilities staff that are going to be tasked to make sure my design works on a day to day basis. I would like to think I'm not making their job more difficult that it should be. Not only that, architects love when we can make miracles happen and find a way to make their tiny strange shaped rooms work for our needs.
I think that gets my point across more than I needed to. So my question for the guys that have done this for years, do you have any recommendations on where I should start?
We used to have a 4-5 old timers here that were layout masters and we're down to 1 who doesn't have enough time to do much other than tell me "you can't do that because of _____" Is there a good book for all these _____'s? It seems like there are a lot of mistakes to be made but I never know what they are until I make the mistake. Thanks!
I understand this isn't that hard and it's not that I can't do it, but every time I do one of the old timers says "yeah, that would work fine, but this way would be better" and of course, they are usually right. It feels like so much more of an art than a science to me that I feel like it may be the most challenging part of my job so far as crazy as that may sound, but I get pretty stuck on doing things the best way possible. Usually my thought of "best" is defined by a high or a low number depending on what I'm talking about.
I work large high rise projects that are always new construction. A chiller plant I have in front of me now for example has 5 chillers, 6 heat heat exchangers, and 14 pumps squeezed into odd shaped spaces that are not what us mechanical engineers would like to see, but they match the space requirements we provided, and we're stuck with making it work. I have a hard time imagining where the pipes go and what choices I could make (pump configurations etc.) to make something that seemed impossible work. Projects are never local either, which makes everything a lot more difficult. When you never see your own work in person, it's hard to know if you are doing a bad job. When I say that I mean regarding the facilities staff that are going to be tasked to make sure my design works on a day to day basis. I would like to think I'm not making their job more difficult that it should be. Not only that, architects love when we can make miracles happen and find a way to make their tiny strange shaped rooms work for our needs.
I think that gets my point across more than I needed to. So my question for the guys that have done this for years, do you have any recommendations on where I should start?
We used to have a 4-5 old timers here that were layout masters and we're down to 1 who doesn't have enough time to do much other than tell me "you can't do that because of _____" Is there a good book for all these _____'s? It seems like there are a lot of mistakes to be made but I never know what they are until I make the mistake. Thanks!
