Limestone Oaks Medical Office, Austin

This sample shows how we approach a typical medical office in Austin; its figures are representative, not taken from a real building. A new two-storey building on a suburban site: reception, primary care exam rooms and a lab draw station on the ground floor, and specialist suites, a minor procedure room and X-ray above. Austin's long, hot and humid cooling season drives the design - dry outdoor air, efficient heat pumps and short duct runs in the ceiling space - with energy code compliance documented in COMcheck.

Mechanical: we scheduled ventilation room by room for about 16,000 ft² of rooms, with the highest outdoor-air rate on ground floor. Heating and cooling come from a VRF heat pump system of 3 outdoor units totalling about 30 tons and 28 indoor units, backed by 1 12-ton gas-fired rooftop unit and 1 energy-recovery ventilator. The rooftop unit dries all the outdoor air with hot-gas reheat before it reaches the rooms, and the procedure room has its own ducted unit and humidity sensor. Electrical: we scheduled the power connection for every rooftop unit, VRF unit, fan, heater and pump — voltage, phase, minimum circuit ampacity and overcurrent protection — and sized the building service for the connected load. Plumbing: City water pressure serves the building directly, one 80-gallon gas-fired heater supplies hot water with recirculation, and sanitary and storm drainage run by gravity to the city sewers. Fire protection: a wet sprinkler system on a 4-inch sprinkler riser fed directly from the city main, hydraulically calculated at about 350 gpm against the city hydrant test. We also prepared the COMcheck energy analysis, the backflow prevention applications and the mechanical, plumbing and sprinkler sets for filing.