Using a combination of new technologies, Issaquah’s Fire Station 72, will be rewarded for its innovation and energy efficiency in January, when its creators receive an ASHRAE award, what project manager Brad Liljequist described as the Oscars of engineering.
Nationwide, two of the six first-place awards given in 2013 will be for projects in Issaquah. The second is for Swedish Issaquah, the state-of-the art hospital that opened in 2011.
ASHRAE, or the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers, recognizes the most energy efficient structures throughout the country each year. The fire station, open since Oct. 2011, is the highest scoring LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum fire station in the world.
“This is the most energy efficient fire station in America,” Liljequist said. “There’s been a lot of evolution in the green building process for a number of years.”
Liljequist said they were in some pretty exalted company, including the Montreal biodome, which was the site of a 1976 Olympic venue, and is now a conservatory which allows visitors to walk through replicas of four ecosystems found in the Americas. Liljequist also said the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. will be honored.
Fire station 72 won in the institutional category, and Swedish won in the new health care facilities category.
The new hospital includes an emergency department, operating rooms, imaging, cardiology and in-patient rooms. Through innovative design, the building was able to achieve a 54 percent energy savings compared to a baseline energy use intensity for a typical hospital.
Efficiency measures include a central plant heat recovery system, variable air volume air systems, low velocity ductwork, high efficiency air handling units and air conditioners, increased insulation, low E windows and energy efficient lighting.
In order to maintain the required pressure relationships mandated in hospitals for infection control, the building utilizes return and exhaust air tracking terminal units and venture valves in its ventilation system. This allows central air handling units to vary supply airflow rates based on demand.
Carbon emissions for the building are 47 percent lower than a baseline building, reducing 6,513 tons of carbon emissions each year. Additionally, the plumbing fixtures, selected to provide both water and energy savings, save 30 percent and 50 percent of the water used by standard fixtures.
To make the fire station so incredibly energy efficient, ground source heat pumps were used. A series of bore holes were dug under what is now the driveway, with water circulating through them. The ground temperature, which remains about 50 degrees, pumps water into the building and through a thermal exchange. Heat pumps in the building act as the furnace. The heating system is in-floor radiant heating inside the concrete slab floors. Exterior insulation also was added, in addition to normal insulation in the walls.
“There is so much insulation — in a normal home you tend to run radiant floor heat hotter, but since this is so well insulated it would be too hot in the station if they ran it high,” Liljequist said.
The sleeping rooms for the firefighters are equipped with individual temperature controls in each private room. This allows firefighters access to cooling on demand when they need to recover after an emergency call, or more heat if needed.
The building also utilizes solar panels on the roof to generate electricity, and separate solar panels for hot water which are boosted by heat pumps.
Chief of maintenance at fire station 73, Kelly Refvem, said PSE just sent them a check for $1,980, for the energy the station produced from the solar panels.
The station also has a rainwater cistern that holds 8,900 gallons, which is used for washing clothes, flushing toilets and spraying down trucks.
Compared to the station in the Issaquah Highlands, fire station 73, which was the first LEED certified fire station in the U.S., station 72 uses about 30 percent the amount of energy station 73 uses.
“We believe this was cost neutral to achieve this level of efficiency,” Liljequist said.
Liljequist said principal and lead mechanical engineer with Ecotope, Jonathan Heller, was the mechanical engineer on the project.
The award for the fire station will be given to Ecotope Inc. – a Seattle firm dedicated to energy efficiency and sustainability — and the City of Issaquah on Jan. 26, 2013 at ASHRAE’s winter conference in Dallas.
Accepting the award for Swedish will be Lee Brei, director of facilities for Swedish, and Dick Moeller principal with CDI, a design and engineering firm. The Swedish project team is rounded out with building systems engineer, Jeff Grinzel, and consultant Larry Humphreys.
Designing the fire station was a collaborative effort between Ecotope Inc., TCA Architecture and Planning, the City of Issaquah and Eastside Fire and Rescue, which occupies and operates the facility.
The final cost of the station was about $6.6 million, which was $1.4 million under the original estimate. The station was paid for by a variety of sources, including a voter-approved bond, District 10, city capital funding and fire mitigation funds.
