Warehouse HVAC advice
Looking to build a 6 story warehouse in Brooklyn, NY. They will be empty boxes but my beverage company will be taking a few floors. Each floor will be about 20-25 feet ceiling height and was wondering what was the optimal way to cool and heat the space? Were looking about 10-20k floor plates depending on the floor.
The spaces we are taking are:
BSMT: 20 feet ceiling height 10k sqft (no windows 100% below grade)
1st Floor: 25-30 feet ceiling height 20k sqft (no windows, above grade but a few drive in doors and 3 loading docks)
3rd floor 20-25 feet ceiling height 10k sqft windows around all sides of space 3 directions of double height windows)
More accustomed to minisplits but dont think it would work in the warehouse scenario as we used just throw a ducted minisplit or wall mount for our resi projects and sell them but this is for my own beverage business so I rather have something that is reliable and cost effective especially since I’m financing the entire cost of the construction.
Thank you in advnace.
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Replies
First cooling a warehouse is best avoided. Sure, the employees would love it but at what cost will people really pay more for stuff stored in a climate-controlled warehouse? For some products yes but for most not so much. This is a business your feelings are irrelevant only the numbers matter. Don’t build your unit any differently than a rental units. The low cost producer is generally the winner in any business model. In most locations city gas is the low-cost option in terms of BTUs/$.
Walta
When I moved into my commercial space 20+ years ago, I was up above the bathroom running some buss duct and sweating my butt off. To add insult to injury, the 16' ceiling was[and still is] ceiling tiles with un conditioned space above. The amount of heat loss from 80 degrees at the ceiling to the great outdoors is mind boggling.
The heating system is a 90+ efficient gas FHA installed one would guess so they would not have to make long runs of hot vent, condensing furnace uses PVC instead. It is mounted ~10 feet up with a duct running horizontally with various angled 6" vents poking out.
I ran most of those angles down to the floor with flex hose.
The change was immediate and dramatic.
There is no longer a cloud of hot air at the ceiling
The point of all this is that if you can find a way to bring the heat output down to where the people are that does not conflict with the need to stack large objects and blast around with forklifts, do it.
As Walta had mentioned, it is inefficient to air condition warehouses unless it is necessary. Since you are running a beverage warehouse, perhaps there is no choice but to air condition. What I have seen in the past is that specific portions of the warehouse are walled off building a modular cooler in order to just condition that portion of the warehouse that required it. The rest of the warehouse was cooled with just moving air using fans. There are multiple ways to condition a warehouse. First, what is the temperature that you require? If it is just around ambient or 70F then Chilled Water with the use of chilled water generation equipment is likely the best solution with the mechanical equipment placed on the roof and chilled water piping distributed throughout the building. Depending on the size of the building you could possibly use split systems that you are familiar with but there are limits to the volume of refrigerant that is allowed within a facility for safety reasons and if the facility is large the volume of refrigerant may not be allowed. Most warehouses that I've seen that are conditioned use Chilled Water and Hot Water for heating. It is possible that you could heat and cool using forced air but if you're going to be building 6 stories that would likely not be the most efficient way to go.
If it were me, I would create an energy model using energy modeling software and model each scenario that is possible and then create an estimate for each one and look at the long term energy usage/cost over time and compare it to the up front cost. I'd use this same model and perform another cost analysis for the building shell design/energy efficiency. This is something that your GC or designer should be able to put together as well.