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To provide enhanced fire protection and emergency services to its community, the City of Bothell replaced two existing fire stations in situ through a progressive design-build effort. The new Canyon Park Fire Station (Fire Station 45) comprises 14,000 SF in two stories and accommodates eight staff and four apparatus bays. A primary goal of the project was to ensure high-quality systems that contribute to cleanliness, protection of the environment, and overall wellness for emergency responders.

Part of this goal was accomplished by P2S’s design of sustainable HVAC systems that contribute to having excellent air quality and a low building energy use index (EUI) - the building EUI is projected to be around 38 kbtu/sf/yr compared to 68 for a baseline fire station.

The fire station facility consists of distinct zones - high exposure, moderate exposure, and safe area - to better isolate hazardous fumes and keep the living areas safe.
The high hazard area contains contaminated items and storage of chemicals and any items with potential carcinogen exposure. This area has constant exhaust to keep it at a negative pressure to the surrounding rooms.

The moderate exposure area includes the apparatus bay and unoccupied storage areas for cleaned Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This area has general exhaust with gas detection, and source capture exhaust for the apparatus engines. The source capture systems have direct apparatus tailpipe exhaust connections that track along a rail. This maintains exhaust extraction constantly throughout the drive-in and drive-out times.

The safe area is comprised of the living/working space and offices, breakrooms, conference rooms, exercise rooms, and bunks. By maintaining positive air pressurization and high air exchange rates, the personnel areas are protected. Ventilation is provided with a high efficiency, energy recovery ventilator and gas detection is present in the sleeping quarters.

As the mechanical engineer and plumbing designer, P2S participated heavily as part of the team with the City, general contractor, architect, and mechanical contractor. Our design process included weekly ‘Big Room’ type meetings for coordination and collaboration. During this period, we kept a transparent open log of design coordination items, and of cost options.

Historically, fire stations are fairly simple facilities with light commercial construction and basic systems. As our team worked with the City of Bothell, we identified ways to have high-quality HVAC systems, that could be monitored remotely.

The primary HVAC system controls for this fire station are manufacturer-based. But there is also a custom DDC (direct digital control) system overlay. This provides the City with the ability to monitor and command certain HVAC system parameters. The City of Bothell can do this remotely. This enables them to monitor alarms, maintenance requirements, and system set points from City Hall or other locations where facility operations personnel are located and dispatched.

These monitoring features are important to the City of Bothell as a way to maintain their facilities. This translates to a building that is orderly and healthy for emergency responders.

In the apparatus bays, there are ventilation systems that monitor the CO2 and noxious gas levels. The exhaust air systems are modulated to provide good air quality and keep the bays at negative pressure to the rest of the fire station. The building ventilation systems work together to provide the normally occupied rooms at a positive pressure compared to the apparatus bays. The occupied station ventilation systems also have high-quality particulate filters (MERV 13 or better). These HVAC features maintain good air quality, and keep noxious gases out of the occupied zones.

In addition to good monitoring and controllability, our team worked together to ensure the design of this station has features that help the firefighters reduce other environmental contaminants. There is a designated hazardous storage closet with negative pressure. The apparatus bays have a gear washing area. Adjacent to the apparatus bays, we designed a decontamination room and a gear turnout room. These rooms have a shower, gear washing, and gear turnout for drying. All of these features are done while outside of the main occupied part of the station. The rooms are heated and ventilated, and the gear turnout room has a dehumidifier to ensure wet gear can dry out quickly.

Originally founded in Los Angeles in 1920 as a school of theology, Vanguard University moved to its campus in Costa Mesa, California in 1950. Over the century, Vanguard has evolved into a leader in educational innovation within its denomination, preparing students for all types of ministry. The University is now preparing for the next 100 years by ensuring generations of students have places and resources needed for academic, relational, spiritual and physical growth. P2S provided MEPT engineering design, site infrastructure, as well coordination for technology, AV and security design for the new state-of-the-art Waugh Student Center. The new building is an extension of the classroom, supporting a relational and unfettered approach to the learning environment of Vanguard.

The 35,000 GSF building replaces the existing student union and cafe, and now features a 16,000 SF cafeteria including on-site commercial kitchen facilities, a 3,000 SF fitness center and an 8,200 SF multi-purpose event space, as well as a student lounge which includes a fireplace and café.

During the schematic design phase, P2S reviewed program statements, site requirements and budgets with the design team, compiled the MEPT criteria and advised the team of the impact to the utility systems, code and space requirements. Designs were completed for the HVAC, electrical, plumbing, technology and lighting systems as well as site plans for proposed gas, electrical and telecom utility improvements, and recommended equipment location and orientation. Chilled water distribution infrastructure for connection to future developments was also designed. Sustainable design strategies were adopted to improve building performance.

During the design development phase, P2S updated and recompiled the preliminary designs as necessary and advised on space requirements and identification of major systems routing and updated site plans. P2S provided final construction documents which finalized the design and included system controls and construction details, reviewed cost estimates, implemented value engineering, constructability design revisions, and City plan checks. Additionally, our team provided construction support and close-out documents. The project was completed in early 2020.

The new Student Success Center (SSC) at UC Riverside (UCR) is a 3-story, 62,000 GSF building comprised of general assignment classrooms for modern pedagogies and technology, multi-purpose student life spaces, and dining services. The building is intended to serve as a new beacon on the campus to support student and organizational success through active learning, collaboration, and community building. The project was intended to not only address UCR’s continued student growth and corollary shortfall of instruction space, but to do so in a manner that upholds UCR’s academic mission with an emphasis on reinforcing student success. This project was certified LEED Gold on July 28, 2022.

From a sustainability standpoint, the team coordinated the construction materials to minimize loads within the building and choose climate appropriate solutions. These collaborative efforts allowed the team to minimize the infrastructure and maximize the usable square footage within the proposed footprint. The team worked to analyze every hour of operation to right-size the equipment and provide innovative solutions, some of which had not been utilized on the campus yet. To implement these systems, the team provided examples of where these technologies had been utilized for similar building types and clients. The building also features low-emitting materials that minimize concentrations of chemical contaminants that are damaging to indoor air quality, human health, productivity, and the environment.

Advanced energy modeling techniques were performed to evaluate the impacts of various energy conservation measures (ECMs). The project team evaluated the energy use intensity (EUI) impacts of multiple design strategies and integrated them with cost estimating from the contractor to understand the total benefits of the ECMs. In a number of cases, the team opted to move in a different direction. For those strategies that were employed, we used the following techniques:

-The project has several large lecture halls with occupancy ranging from 100-420 occupants, based on the room size. These lectures hall have high ventilation loads and raised flooring. For these spaces, we used indirect evaporative cooling and displacement ventilation to reduce the demands on compressor driven cooling. These strategies resulted in an EUI savings of approximately 4 btu/SF-year.

- For the large lecture halls, we provided four VAV zones, with the zone controls and reheat coils within the mechanical penthouse. This allowed us to eliminate any service within the space or the raised floor, to minimize the maintenance impacts to the space.

- The campus had an existing steam system that is failing and unreliable. The campus also has a requirement that we cannot have combustion for hydronic heating and domestic hot water. We used a modular heat recovery chiller to generate HHW for the building and export CHW to the campus loop. This strategy had a 7-point EUI reduction compared to the steam system.

- The project utilized a heat pump water heater for domestic hot water.

These solutions would not have been possible without collaboration of the building layout, envelope construction, shading, etc. to minimize the loads seen by the mechanical system. The contractor supported this collaboration by providing valuable input into the cost impacts of the strategies being proposed.