Denver Public Schools’ Whiteman Elementary, built-in 1955, is located in Denver’s Mayfair Park neighborhood. One of the District’s 2018 school improvement projects, 360 Engineering led the design team as the prime consultant in replacing all existing classroom unit ventilators, in addition to replacing pneumatic controls throughout the building, and several existing roof-mounted exhaust fans. The new digital controls were connected to the recently installed building automation system. The new unit ventilators included both a steam coil and a chilled water coil for future cooling capacity.
During the initial fieldwork at Whiteman, the engineers discovered that replacing the unit ventilators in two classrooms would cause a conflict with an existing chalkboard. The design team architect, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer met on-site and discussed the options with relocating the unit ventilator versus modifying the chalkboard and electrical surface wiremold. In the end, it was determined to be more cost-effective to modify the chalkboard and reroute the electrical wiremold than to rework the steam lines in the crawl space to move the unit ventilator. This conclusion could not have been reached by one team member alone and needed input from all design team members to arrive at the best solution.
