Springs Utilities SECC Cooling Tower Replacement

In 2022, Colorado Springs Utilities requested Tremmel Design Group (Compass|TDG Architecture), Schendt Engineering Corporation (SEC), and MGA Structural Engineers, Inc. to be the design team for their crisis command center cooling systems.

This project involved the replacement of two cooling towers within the building envelope. Each cooling tower is dedicated to a Multistack modular chiller with emergency change-over redundancy. One chiller is dedicated to servers utilized during emergency events, and the other serves the building comfort conditioning with emergency change-over control valves.

Due to the critical systems served by the cooling system, the project was designed with phasing to install a temporary chiller connection capable of serving either chilled water loop, while one cooling tower was replaced and started up to maintain full building systems operation.

The project penthouse mechanical room was very congested; therefore, SEC had to establish new temporary chiller piping routed down to the loading dock in order to keep the two existing chilled water distribution loops in service during construction.

The design involved installation of control valves for emergency change-over conditions to either chilled water loop and coordination for a short chilled water service shutdown.

A temporary air cooled chiller fused disconnect with sufficient ampacity for any rental chiller required under emergency conditions was permanently mounted in the equipment yard adjacent to the chilled water piping and controls connections.

A section of the roof around each cooling tower had to be removed for the cooling tower replacement and a separation wall had to be maintained and refinished with air stops.

The cooling towers were set on spring isolation rails and had to be constructed with allowance for vibrations and movement while reducing outside air infiltration into the freeze protected portion of the mechanical room.