The Veterinary Medicine Building houses teaching facilities for the departments of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Pathobiology.
The project included the complete renovation of approximately 4,300 square feet of classroom space into research laboratories. The laboratories, including a tissue laboratory requiring special HEPA filtration, are generally biological research laboratories which are used by professors to conduct experiments and further research into the veterinary sciences. Along with new fume hoods, a complete new HVAC ductworkUM-Columbia-2 system, and laboratory control system to control pressure, air change rates, and temperature within the new laboratories was designed and installed. Plumbing services included compressed lab air, natural gas, vacuum, and deionized water.
As part of this project, the air handling unit was replaced due to the age of the equipment and to provide the increased capacity required to condition the increased amount of outside air required for laboratories. Energy usage of the system was reduced with the installation of a plate-and-frame air-to-air heat recovery unit to precondition the outside air. The ductwork system was converted from a dual duct constant volume system to a variable volume, hot water reheat system. This was to facilitate the conversion of the classroom spaces into labs. The space originally used for the hot deck ductwork was reused for the fume/general exhaust ductwork in the new design.