Continuous Commissioning® of A Large University Campus Domestic Hot Water System

ABSTRACT Texas A&M University's central domestic hot water (DHW) system is a sub-system of the campus' 36.5 MW co-generation, and serves a total of more than 6 million square feet of dormitory, office, classroom, library, hotel, restaurant, and lab spaces in 68 campus buildings, being one of the largest of such systems. In the last five years, more and more students complained about “cold showers” in their dorms. Some temporary measures were taken, but could not solve the problems completely and were wasting energy. It brought the attention of the university's Physical Plant Department and Residence Life Department, which determined to completely resolve the issue. The Continuous Commissioning® (CC®) process was implemented. Previous to field actions, a much simplified hydraulic model was built to study the distribution system characteristics for the best direction of CC. The results show the building circulation flow will remain within an acceptable range while the loads vary, which demonstrates manual b...