Other Sustainable Design Projects

Details about a few other projects.

• Renovate and Upgrade Transportation Shops and Yards As a sub consultant on this Work Order, FSi’s scope was to renovate and upgrade the City of Seattle Transportation Shops and Yards. The bulk of the work was at the Charles Street Shops area; facilities included two Vehicle Maintenance Buildings, Tire Shop, Fueling Facilities, Vehicle Wash and Fire Engines Repair Shops, two parking garages, and a five-story office building. Scope consisted of pre-design effort for an addition and renovation of the Administration Building, the upgrade of the painting facility, and a new vactor facility. The following LEED opportunities for administration building were considered: rainwater capture, energy efficiency, and improved indoor environmental quality.

• Piping Replacement for Boeing Commercial Drinking Water Quality Water samples were taken from the domestic water system and revealed unusually high concentrations of contaminants in the water used for drinking and hand washing. As a result of the contaminated water samples, FSi was asked to perform field-verification of approximately 12,000 total lineal feet of domestic and process water piping in a 1,591,000 square foot manufacturing building and in a 145,000 square foot engineering laboratory. FSi analyzed the systems for cross-contamination protection compliance (backflow prevention) and prepared replacement drawings and specifications calling for concrete-lined ductile iron piping. This high first cost material was selected with “sustainability” in mind to prevent further build-up of contaminants and to help insure the system will not need another replacement effort for many years to come.

• Boeing Commercial “Once-through” Cooling Revisions FSi provided the design to eliminate “once-through” cooling water use. Once-through systems use clean city water for cooling and discharge the water into the storm drain. This practice wastes clean water, unnecessarily adds load to the storm drain system and opens the possibi9lity of contamination of the storm drain by the equipment cooled. The areas using the cooling water included boiler feedwater pumps, air conditioning condensers, air compressor cooling, and hydraulic pump cooling. The project successfully achieved its goals of conserving domestic water, reducing storm drain load and eliminating possible contaminates in the site storm system. The design included a closed-looped cooling tower system for the major loads; rerouting minor loads discharges to the sanitary system; revising operations modes to take advantage of existing cooling capabilities; piping; plumbing; potable water; chiller revisions; DDC with EMCS tie-in.

• United States Postal Service Oil/Water Separation System Addition FSi provided the mechanical design for the installation of a high efficiency oil water separation system. The anticipated oil flow from this motor pool garage was sufficient to require an “active” separation system in lieu of the standard separation tank. The active system included an explosion-proof sump pump, a waste holding tank, 3-stage filtration and an oil holding tank. The effectiveness of the installed system allows wastewater to be discharged directly to the local sanitary system.

• Valley Medical Center Tank Replacement FSi provided the design and construction services as the prime consultant for the replacement of two underground storage tanks at Valley Medical Center. The existing single-wall tanks were dug up and replaced with one 1,000-gallon double wall tank for gasoline and one 20,000-gallon double wall tank for diesel fuel for service to the hospital emergency generator. The new tanks were also provided with electronic leak monitoring.