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Retrofit Heating & Cooling at The Akron Art Museum

Jan 23, 2018

Best completed this retrofit project for the Akron Art Museum. This community facility encompasses several usage types, including exhibits, training, an auditorium, and corporate gatherings. Maintaining critical temperature and humidity control while bringing the new system online presented challenges, as did working with restrictive sensor and device locations and converting old pneumatic actuators to direct digital control actuators.

Networked hardware includes a MACH-ProWeb as a front-end device with MACH-Pro1 and MACH-Pro2 controllers serving the air handling units (AHUs). SMART-Sensor LCD devices are installed for all zone temperature/humidity sensors. MACH-ProAir controllers serve critical art storage zones and MACH-ProZone controllers serve all radiant floor loops and snow melt zones.

Mechanical equipment includes two chillers, two boilers, 12 AHUs with chilled water, hot water, reheat, outside air flow monitoring, and variable frequencing drives (VFDs) on all fans. Two of the AHUs are VAV style with VAV boxes downstream. These units serve critical art storage areas.

The facility is currently a 24/7 operation. Critical environment control is of utmost importance for this community facility, and the MACH-System has done an excellent job achieving this goal.

Read More at Reliable Controls

The Akron Art Museum is a metropolitan art and cultural center, as well as an educational facility. Spanning three centuries, the Akron Art Museum combines a late nineteenth-century brick and limestone building with the twenty-first century John S. and James L. Knight Building, a soaring glass and steel structure by the celebrated Viennese architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au.