The Oakland B&O Railroad Museum in Oakland, MD needed updates to their mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems to continue their preservation of artifacts and smoothly run this historical, cultural center. Century provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services for the museum upgrades.
Century performed a predesign study to determine viable means to provide air conditioning to the building. Engineers surveyed the building several times to ascertain the aesthetic nature of the historic structure and to envision pathways for routing duct work that would be concealed within the existing structure without impacting the historical nature of the building interior. Our team also observed the thermal envelope construction to model the building air conditioning load.
The design consisted of four dedicated systems or zones to serve each area of the museum — ticketing, waiting, baggage, and second floor office. Calculations of the air conditioning load for each area indicated that two nominal 5-ton air conditioners for the waiting and baggage areas, one 4-ton for the second-floor office area, and one nominal 2-ton for the ticketing area were required. Three of the fan coil units and associated duct work were placed in the basement space to serve the ticketing, waiting, and baggage areas while one was placed in the attic space to serve the second-floor office.
Air diffusers were placed directly at the windows in front of the radiators for good air diffusion, cooling efficiency, and aesthetics. It was challenging to design the routing of the duct work in the basement because of the various stone foundation walls which varied from 16-inches to 24-inches thick and conflicted with the existing hydronic heating piping serving the radiators on the floor above. Much of the duct work was routed around and through existing openings in the thick foundation walls to overcome this challenge.
The Oakland B&O Railroad Museum
Oakland, MD
The Oakland B&O Railroad Museum
Oakland, MD
