Consulting-Specifying Engineer - August 2007 - (Page 32)

Aircraft warning lights Aircraft warning lights are an essential requirement on any tall building. In the United States, these systems must comply with Federal Aviation Administration requirements. In much of the rest of the world, the ICAO standards apply. The red (sometimes white) warning beacons are located at the top of the building and at intermediate levels as dictated by the standards. By their nature, these beacons are conspicuous, which often conflicts with the architect’s vision for the building. The architect and engineer must work together to locate these lights so that they fulfill their intended purpose and limit the impact on the esthetics of the building. Service rooms, spaces and risers In any building, service rooms and spaces present a design coordination challenge. The architect will strive to maximize the use of space for which the building is being provided and will attempt to minimize the space loss caused by service spaces. The electrical and mechanical engineers must work closely with the architect to ensure that an adequate number of service rooms and spaces In many cases, the electrical engineer will find that the electrical spaces provided in the initial design are irregular, undersized and impractical, and may request larger and more practically located spaces that will provide maintenance and service staff with a convenient and comfortable working environment. The architect will accommodate these requirements as long as the loss of usable space is minimized and the overall building costs are not increased. For example, when Giffels Assocs. was designing Atlantis, The Palm, the engineer are provided to support the building requireand architect made several changes to serments. They also must ensure that these vice rooms as the design matured. The size spaces are large enough and practically and shape of some rooms in the original archilocated, that is, close to the point of utilizatectural concept proved to be too small, oddly tion. The location must allow for easy moveshaped or not practically located. To resolve ment of equipment in and out of the room and the problem, the engineer provided the archito the outside. Finally, the spaces must be tect with scaled layout drawings showing the configured to accept the equipment they are equipment to be accommodated, as well as to house and provide sufIn extra tall buildings, transformers at low ficient space for equipment levels are insufficient. At some height, the maintenance. The architectural design voltage drop caused by the impedance will include service cores of the supply conductors will become such as elevator shafts, electrical and telecommuni- significant and the supply voltage will fall cations rooms, mechanical below acceptable values. rooms and risers, garbage and linen chutes and other such utility spaces. minimum space requirements and technical The cores may extend the complete height of limitations. As design progressed, the soluthe building or they may rise to a specific level tion was further refined based on the specific and then transfer and continue in a different needs of the facility. location. Where such The space requirements for electrical and an offset occurs, the telecommunication riser rooms and spaces in engineers must find tall buildings are significant. These rooms will a horizontal space house equipment for many different systems, in which the services including power distribution panels, feeder can be transferred to and plug-in busways, lighting control panels, the new location. emergency lighting supply panels, fire alarm transponder panels and their associated battery cabinets, security system equipment, voice and data distribution racks and cabinets, building management system panels and cable and conduit risers. To minimize the space demands, it may be possible to spread the equipment among several floors and to serve multiple floors with one piece of 32 Consulting-Specifying Engineer • AUGUST, 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Consulting-Specifying Engineer - August 2007

Contents M/E Roundtable Giants 100 Pullout Poster Giants Stand Tall: CSE Giants 100 Report Electrical Design for Tall Buildings HVAC and Fire Safety for Elevator Systems How to Beat the Codes GAS Technology Supplement Recovering Waste Heat from Boilers New Applications for Tankless Water Heating Systmes Techniques Improve for Powder Coating MDF New Tools Available for Heat Treating Steel Direct Drive Engines

Consulting-Specifying Engineer - August 2007

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