ATLANTA, GA - Providing HVAC for one of the nation’s largest natatoriums is a tough task in itself, however engineers and architects for the new Georgia Tech Campus Recreation Center had a tight budget and many pre-existing structural hurdles to negotiate.

The 13,300-square-foot pool, which is the former outdoor pool built for the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, serves as the anchor for Georgia Tech’s ambitious $45 million, Campus Recreation Center that surrounds it. The Aquatic Center that encloses this mammoth competition pool presented a host of HVAC design challenges for engineer, Michael Saunders, senior engineer and business development at design/build mechanical contractor, Lee Company, and architect, Hastings + Chivetta Architects.

The original 1.5-million-gallon swimming/diving pools’ free-standing, towering 115-foot-high rain/sun shelter and rooftop photovoltaic cells were to remain as part of a 25-year research study grant conducted by the university, Georgia Power, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Although ingenious, the initial design surpassed Georgia Tech’s budget, therefore many contractors for all trades were required to value engineer the project. The Lee Company did its share of value engineering and cut the project’s HVAC/plumbing budget by several hundred thousand dollars, according to Saunders. The redesign switched out the originally specified double-wall round aluminum metal duct with fabric air dispersion duct and saved over $100,000.

Sedona fabric duct with Comfort-Flow air dispersion and linear vents from DuctSox, Dubuque, IA, helped cut both material and installation costs. Gray fabric duct distributes dry, conditioned air along a wall of exterior windows and three branches span the entire width of the pool surface. A separate duct run supplies the spectator seating.

In addition to saving material and labor costs, fabric duct doesn’t require interior insulation and exterior epoxy coatings to prevent condensation and corrosion respectively, that’s inherent in natatorium environments. “Fabric duct offers a bonus over metal in natatorium environments, because pool chemicals do not degrade polyester fabric material,” said Saunders.

In addition to saving money in labor and materials, Georgia Tech’s maintenance department has a cost-effective option of retracting the DuctSox on its H-Track suspension system and laundering it, which is less costly than conventional metal duct cleaning services.

Thanks to value engineering, Georgia Tech is an example of a world class facility that doesn’t sacrifice indoor air quality.