In discussing the design engineering of equipment rooms, we have already touched on chiller rooms and boiler rooms, so this month we will address air handling equipment rooms. If you haven’t read the two previous month’s columns on designing equipment rooms, please make sure you do, as several of the previous topics apply to air handling equipment rooms, too.
As we all know, ducts are generally larger than pipes, so design engineering is very tricky. The obvious concerns are headroom and metal corners where you can hit your head, while the less obvious include the details of specifying fans that can compromise system performance and serviceability if fan configuration specifics are overlooked during the design. Let’s look at some key concerns.