1161 E 156th Street, Bronx

A warehouse and office building in the Bronx for a single tenant, with a floor added at the roof, a new hydraulic passenger elevator and a parking garage in the cellar. The brief had four parts: remove the existing heating and cooling and replace it with a VRF system, because the building has both a lot of storage and offices; bring fresh air to the storage, the offices, the meeting room and the lounge; ventilate a 4,300 ft² garage that sits below the ground floor; and keep the whole building under one fire alarm system. The mechanical set went through filing in January 2024, was revised in February 2024, and the fire alarm was revised in August 2026 in response to a Department of Buildings objection. Like every New York project, the design also has to satisfy the NYC Construction Codes and the city's energy code requirements.

Heating and cooling: two air-cooled VRF heat pump systems on the roof, one for each floor — each a 10-ton outdoor unit (114 MBH cooling, 126 MBH heating, 208/230 V three-phase) serving four concealed ducted indoor units of 2.5 or 3.0 tons, so the offices and the storage areas can be controlled separately — plus a 1-ton cooling-only split system. Fresh air and exhaust: outdoor-air fans of 540 cfm with 10 kW electric duct heaters for each floor, 400 cfm toilet exhaust fans and a 200 cfm exhaust for the IT room, all scheduled from a room-by-room ventilation calculation to the 2022 mechanical code; and for the garage, a 3,225 cfm exhaust fan and a 2,600 cfm make-up air fan, with 1.5 kW electric unit heaters in the garage and on the roof. Plumbing energy: the COMcheck report for two 10-gallon electric storage water heaters with circulation pumps, to the 2020 NYC Energy Conservation Code. Fire alarm: an addition to and modification of the existing manual and automatic smoke detection and sprinkler alarm system for a fully sprinklered, single-tenant building: pull stations, area smoke and heat detectors, duct smoke detectors, smoke detectors in the elevator lobby, the machine room and the shaft with a heat detector at the top of the shaft, carbon monoxide detection that shuts down gas-fired equipment, waterflow and tamper supervision, a new remote annunciator, elevator recall to the first floor, synchronized strobes and central-station monitoring. The set covers the notes, specifications, plans for every level and the roof, refrigerant piping, a ducting riser, four details sheets and the equipment schedules.