For 60 years, the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin Hotel has been accommodating Austin travelers downtown. The 16-floor building was in need of a chiller replacement in its basement. The design and construction team worked hard to retrofit a new energy-efficient chiller into the constrained space to meet the needs of the hotel.
The existing chiller was extremely loud, causing concern since several offices reside next to the mechanical room. The hotel was looking for a newer, quieter, and more cost-efficient alternative to their old system. They wanted to rack up year-round savings with an energy-efficient unit that would provide enough cooling capacity to prevent them from having to use the air-cooled chiller on the roof as a back-up.
HTS Texas found the solution to fit the client’s needs in the Daikin McQuay Magnitude™ water-cooled chiller. Two 250 Ton WMC250 units were installed in the basement mechanical room. This model was the least expensive, most efficient, and quietest unit that would fit the hotel’s size restrictions. Arriving during the first week of the SXSW festival, the chillers had to be brought in at night since the alley was unable to be closed off. The mechanical contractor, M-Tech, hired a rigging company to help bring the disassembled parts into the small service elevator and down the narrow halls of the basement. A few walls had to be sacrificed to get the barrels through to the mechanical room, but all the parts made it to their destination where M-Tech and McQuay Factory Service then assembled the chillers.
The install was a challenge but will be well worth it in terms of the amount of energy and dollars the hotel can expect to see with the new oil-free chillers in place.
