North Boulder Recreational Center

Project Summary

City of Boulder
Boulder, Colorado

Project Type:
New Building Commissioning

Size:
60,000 Square Feet

Year Occupied:
2003

Project Details

The North Boulder Recreation Center recently underwent an extensive renovation to refurbish and expand the recreation facilities and services offered to the citizens of Boulder. High levels of energy efficiency and sustainable design have been integrated into the recreation center, including solar heating of the swimming pool water, aggressive daylighting, heat recovery, low environmental impact material use, and a comprehensive building automation system. The 5,680 square foot flat plat solar thermal array on the roof provides heat for a lap pool and a child’s pool. An energy meter continually totals how many Btus of solar energy have been collected to date. Energy wheels in the roof-top units that serve the pool area capture the energy of the exhaust air and reintroduce it into the supply air. Architectural Energy Corporation provided whole-building commissioning to ensure comfort (temperature, relative humidity, and ventilation) requirements were met while optimizing energy savings. The project earned a LEED Silver Certification.

Project Highlights

Architectural Energy Corporation provided compressive whole-building commissioning services throughout the design, construction, and acceptance / occupancy process.

Commissioning activities (construction observation, functional performance testing, short term monitoring, etc.) uncovered and verified correction of the installation and operation of many control and equipment features. Control of the Air Handling Unit gas reheat through the DDC is important for CO2 control but was not being implemented. Because the sensor wire was close to the power wires, the only building-wide outside air sensor was reading erroneously whenever the compressors of the roof top unit adjacent to it would run. Several of the lighting occupancy controls were not installed in locations that blocked their operation. These and several other issues were identified and resolved with cooperation from the commissioning team members.