HVAC Systems 9

Chilled Water Pump, CHWP

Chilled Water Supply, CHWS
Chilled Water Return, CHWR
Chilled Water Coil (Cooling Coil), CC
Heating Water Coil (Hot Water Coil, Heating Coil), HC
Heating Water Supply, HWS or HHWS
Heating Water Return, HWR or HHWR
Heating Water Pump, HWP
Boiler, B
Supply Air Fan, SAF, SF
Supply Air Duct, SA
Manual Volume Damper, MVD
Flex Duct, Flex
Ceiling Diffuser, CD
Return Air Inlet, RA
Return Air Duct, RA
Return Air Fan, RAF
Return Air Dampers, RA, ATC Damper (Automatic Temperature
Control Damper)
Exhaust Air (Dampers), EA, ATCD
Outside Air (Dampers) OA, ATCD
Filters, F
Water Valves, 3-way or 2-way ATC Valve(Automatic Temperature
Control Valve). MBV (Manual Balancing Valve) or Self-regu-
lating Balancing Valve

This AHU is located on the roof and is therefore designated

as a “roof top unit” (RTU).

HOW AN HVAC SYSTEM WORKS

An HVAC system is designed to provide conditioned air to

the occupied space, also called the “conditioned” space, to main-
tain the desired level of comfort. To begin to explain how an
HVAC system works let’s set some design conditions. First, we
10 HVAC Fundamentals

will need to determine the ventilation requirements. We know that

in the respiratory process the contaminate carbon dioxide is ex-
haled. In buildings with a large number of people, carbon dioxide
and other contaminants such as smoke from cigarettes and odors
from machinery must be continuously removed or unhealthy con-
ditions will result. The process of supplying “fresh” air (now most
often called outside air) to buildings in the proper amount to offset
the contaminants produced by people and equipment is known as
“ventilation”. Not only does the outside air that is introduced into
the conditioned space offset the contaminants in the air but be-
cause of its larger ion content, outside air has a “fresh air” smell in
contrast to the “stale” or “dead air” smell noticed in overcrowded
rooms that do not have proper ventilation. In many instances, lo-
cal building codes stipulate the amount of ventilation required for
buildings and work environments.
Let’s say that an HVAC system supplies air to a suite in an
office complex and the code requirement is for 20 cubic feet per
minute (abbreviated cfm) of outside air for each building occu-
pant. If the suite is designed for 10 people then the total outside
air requirement for the people in the suite is 200 cfm. An addi-
tional amount of outside ventilation air may be required if there
are exhaust hoods such as laboratory fume hoods, kitchen hoods,
and spray hoods or there are other areas where the air needs to
be exhausted or vented to the outside such as bathrooms and
restrooms. This ventilation air is called make-up air.
If more air is brought into a room (conditioned space) than
is taken out of a room the room becomes positively pressurized.
If more air is taken out of a room than is brought into a room the
room becomes negatively pressurized. These air pressures,
whether positive or negative are measured in inches of water
gage (in wg) or inches of water column (in wc).
Commercial office buildings are typically positively pressur-
ized to about 0.03 inches of water pressure. This is done to keep
outside air from “infiltrating” into the conditioned space through
openings in or around doorways, windows, etc. Other areas that
need positive pressurization are hospital operating rooms and