Type: New Construction

Size: 72,000 sq. ft.

Cost: $17,000,000

Services: Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection

 

A new 72,000 sq. ft. free-standing annex was built to give additional space to the Harrison County judicial system 
for courthouse administrative functions. The building was designed for 24-hour operation. SBM performed mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and technology design for this project.

The HVAC design consisted of a system that could deliver all the elements of a VAV reheat system while meeting the owner’s budget goals. To accomplish this, SBM utilized electric reheat, packaged rooftop units, and electric supplemental heat throughout the building. This system controls humidity and temperature while complying with ventilation code. The generator was located indoors. This led to HVAC challenges and required careful design considerations. The generators require large amounts of air for cooling purposes. They also have a high temperature exhaust flue that needed to be routed to the exterior of the building. A prefabricated exhaust flue system suitable for high temperature applications allowed for the design of a system that would be safe for the surrounding areas.

For the plumbing and fire protection, an electric duplex domestic water heater system was utilized in conjunction with a domestic hot water re-circulation pump to efficiently deliver hot water to the building’s fixtures. Water pressure was not adequate for the 100 psi code requirement at the top of the standpipes for the fire protection system. West Virginia code allows for the use of manual wet standpipes to avoid the need for an expensive fire pump. As such, this approach was utilized and the building was fully sprinklered, along with a few dry pipe and pre-action system zones that had special design conditions relative to the rest of the building.

 

The lighting design consists of architectural LED lighting andcode-compliant lighting controls throughout the building. A 400kW indoor natural-gas generator was designed to provide emergency power for most of the building loads. Multiple transfer switches were designed to separate life safety, elevator, and stand-by loads.

The telecom design consisted of a complete structured cabling system, telecom racks, patch panels, cable tray, and grounding. The building contains the main server room for the county. Each telecom room was provided with a dedicated panelboard connected to the central UPS. A centralized UPS was designed to provide uninterrupted power for the telecommunications equipment during the generator start-up time.