Vancouver City Hall

When the City of Vancouver was looking at seismically upgrading City Hall they determined that the east wing would be cheaper to simply demolish and build anew. However, the east wing was home to the chiller that provided cooling to the main City Hall tower, which meant that would need to be removed. Hundreds of employees work in the building so it was clear they would need a cooling solution for the coming summer season.

The Challenge

While the cooling load on the chiller didn’t contain any server rooms or other major sources of heat, the people, computers and summer sun created a large heat load overall. It was determined that 100 tons of cooling was needed throughout the whole building.

The Solution

The best way to cool City Hall was to make use of the existing chilled loop system; while the chiller was out of commission, there was nothing wrong with the loop itself. On the day of the installation we lifted a 100 ton chiller, a specialized transformer, and all the necessary accessories into place via crane. With our chiller hooked up to their existing system we were able to deliver chilled water to the numerous fan coils that served the public, meeting and office areas of the building.

The Result

During the summer of 2017 the temperature rose to record-breaking levels, particularly near the end of August, but the people working at City Hall were able to stay comfortable and work effectively because our chiller kept the temperature down at a reasonable level.