Heating an indoor football arena?

Shawn Brodaski

I am a senior civil engineering student at uconn, and am working on a project doing a preliminary design of a new indoor football complex to be built on campus for practices. I need to design the heating system but i'm not sure where to start. I know i want to use a forced hot air system, but i don't know anything about the size of the heating units required or things like that. If someone has some advise that would point me in the right direction that would be great.

JimGPE_5

Really?

Is this for real, or is this a school project? You get answers either way, but its helpful to know.

Shawn Brodaski

Re:really?

i'm sorry about the confusion, i guess it wasn't clear. Yes this is for my senior design project.

kevin coppinger_4

are you sure forced .....

hot air is the way to go? kpc

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Robert O'Connor_3

Wethead's dream

radiant astro turf and college football!

John Jr

Go Radiant and get an A+.

John Jr.

Weezbo

radiant

radiant heating radiant cooling Heat recovery ventalation...waste heat absorption with one of ME's Lash ups humidity control low water temp recirc through the metal hand rails with zones on them to moderate either cooler temp waters during the game or warmer temps in cooler times:)

joe_17

You

want to heat that sucker up then go get you a **** Butkus.Greatest football player who ever lived.Yea go recruit you a 17 year old **** Butkus,he would fire that place up.Then again his like will never come again.Sorry...sorry just dreaming about the glory days.These youngsters have no idea.

ScottMP

Look up Foxboro Stadium in NE

They just installed radiant under the turf. A matter of fact I think Dan has an article about it somewhere.

Check out that system before you go to far

Scott

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Radiant Wizard

You need

to start with a heat loss of the structure. Without it, your grade will be an F. Then pick out the proper heating appliance or appliances that will do the job. I believe most of these types of structures are forced air. Do some research on other facilities and see how they did it.

For those that are talking about radiant I really don't think you understand that the radiant put under fields is not to heat the space but to condition the turf. Didn't you ever wonder why the grass was green in January. I take it that this is a practice complex.

Mark Eatherton1

I hate to say this, but...

this is one application that I wouldn't consider radiant as a good candidate for. Radiant floor heating in excersize areas generally gets turned OFF due to it being TOO warm.

They want to sweat, yes, just not THAT much.

Plus, considering fresh air requirements and required ventilation, this systems fits much better as a candidate to forced error.

JMHO

ME



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Constantin

Yep

I hear the radiant systems are what's needed to keep the grass growing year-round. As long as the roots don't get cold, the stuff doesn't go dormant.

Only a heat gain/loss calculation will show what systems will work best. My guess is that a forced air system is the way most stadiums are cooled and heated these days. Place a couple of ginormous furnaces and chillers around the complex, then watch as the control system tries to maintain a sense of normalcy inside the space when fans start arriving.

I don't see how the responsiveness of air can be beat in these circumstances. Plus, you only heat/cool the place when you need it instead of having to deal with large thermal masses that make more sense for large open spaces under different circumstances (factories, air plane hangars, etc.).

jwade55_3

Here is one

at an indoor facility at penn state university, the link is to a rep here in pittsburghs web site, hope they don't mind.

Jay

http://www.herrmann-assoc.com/pennstate.htm

flange

you will need to do a heat loss/ gain for the proposed structure. there are software programs out there that will help you to do this. there are free trials out there as well. from there you will need to decide whether you want a central plant or individual units, with or without automation. is this a fixed structure or a bubble? you will need at the least heating and ventilation. staging of equipment is preferred due to various loads that you wil encounter. air velocities are very important so as not to affect ball movement. other than that its pretty simple really. break the arena into zones, and design a system for each zone. i would start with at least eight zones probably more. forget radiant. its use in football is to prolaong the growing season, and to keep the soil from getting to hard in northern climates. it is not well suited for in indoor arena. a central plant with nice high temperature hot water generators feeding a three pipe system would be great but very exopensive. gas fired units might be okay, as you could stage them very well, and also put them on automation. air conditioning is another thing. chilled water is great, especially if you use a supercycle (free cooling) for those days when it can be run to save energy.

tim smith_2

arena heat

A good starting point would be to call Reznor mfg in Lancaster Pa, talk to one of there application engineers. This will probably be a 100% makeup air job, either indirect fired or direct fired unit. Partial exhaust for stadium also. Any other ?? call. Will it be a bubble or permanent structure over field?

jerry scharf