Viega radiant heating and cooling for the Grand Central Station of the future
Located in Orange County, California, USA, the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC) provides transportation service for three million local residents and 40 million annual visitors. When building the Grand Central Station of the future, it’s important to have a team of designers, engineers and contractors that will be there from the beginning to the end. Viega played a role in designing and installing radiant heating and cooling in the ARTIC.
A LEED Platinum building, the structure is 67,000 square feet with three levels, connecting people to a variety of transit options including dining and entertainment. ARTIC’s architecture includes a large number of windows and a dome-shaped structure, which results in high solar gains but controlling the climate inside the building with a conventional forced-air system would have been practically impossible.
Radiant heating and cooling
HVAC designers chose to implement a Viega ProRadiant heating and cooling system instead. Radiant cooling allows for the instantaneous removal of heat through absorption. Installing ViegaPEX Barrier tubing at tightly spaced increments (6" on-center) within two inches of the finished surface floor gives the engineer the ability to remove the solar sensible gain instantaneously. For the ARTIC project, the cooling capacity ranges up to 40 btuh/sq.ft. This provides an energy savings of 34% over ASHRAE 90.1-2007.
The ARTIC project marked California Comfort System’s first radiant heating and cooling project with Viega systems and the Viega radiant design team. Overall, 44,000 feet of in-slab heating and cooling pipe, 18 manifolds and 12 pumps were installed.
“From inception of the design to the commissioning, Viega was there by our side,” said Paul Redgate, Pipe Fitting Superintendent for California Comfort Systems. “Viega’s involvement was priceless – they didn’t just hand us the package and walk away. To have them out there all the way through to the end of the project was probably the best feature overall. And we still beat the industry average by 25% on the install.”
