University Health System—Trauma Tower, Central Plant Expansion

Project name: University Health System—Trauma Tower and Central Plant Expansion

Location: San Antonio, Texas

Firm name: TMAD Taylor and Gaines (TTG)

Project type, building type: New construction, hospital

Project duration: 4.5 years

Project completion date: January, 2014

Project budget for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection engineering only: $150 million

Engineering challenges

One of the challenges encountered was to deliver all air handling unit condensate to the cooling tower as makeup water.

Solutions

We overcame this challenge by providing collection tanks on each level of the hospital that contained air units. A separate line was then routed to the common cooling tower basin from each collection tank. This allowed the use of existing elevation to move the water to the cooling towers basin, without pumps and without overflowing air units or tanks at lower levels.

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