New Fire Station Designed with Intelligent Building Strategies

The City of Madison’s new Fire Station 14 showcases the city’s commitment to its community and the environment. Along with high-efficiency equipment and stringent sustainability goals, this project was designed with intelligent building strategies that helped the project achieve LEED Platinum certification.

IMEG engineers provided several intelligent building strategies including sub-metering for water, HVAC trend data, and monitoring of the building’s operational trends, which allowed the owner, design team, and commissioning agent to confirm that the building performance matched the design intent and to identify and correct operational issues that may cause unnecessary energy consumption in the future.

Additionally, the HVAC system included energy recovery and heating/cooling of the outside air prior to reaching the air handling unit, which allows ventilation air to provide the main dehumidification and humidity control for the space. In high-density spaces, the humidity levels and return air were monitored so the air handling unit’s supply air could have very aggressive discharge air reset levels. This resulted in greater energy savings compared to a traditional HVAC system while maintaining user comfort levels in compliance with COTE Top Ten criteria.

Other sustainable design features included a ground-source geothermal system that serves the building’s heating and cooling system and a high-efficiency condensing boiler that supplements the geothermal system during peak heating needs. A 50kW solar photovoltaic array prominently doubles as a shading canopy across the entire length of the building and helps to offset portions of the electrical loads associated with the geothermal and lighting systems.