CITY OF BEVERLY GEOTHERMAL AND ENVELOPE IMPROVEMENTS DESIGN
BEVERLY, MA
OPPORTUNITY
The Beverly Public Library is used by City residents as a community center and loans over 350,000 items annually to almost 27,000 borrowers. The library, built in 1913, consists of four floors and is approximately 47,000 square feet. The HVAC equipment (installed in 1993) has reached the end of its useful life and needs replacement. The City of Beverly has committed to being carbon neutral by 2040 and wanted to understand how to incorporate a carbon reduction strategy into the complete replacement of existing HVAC systems. Since B2Q has been successfully providing energy and HVAC services to the City for more than 10 years, they commissioned B2Q to assist with this important assignment.
CHALLENGE
Like many other municipalities, the City of Beverly has buildings with aging infrastructure and is looking forward to replacing these systems with energy-efficient electric heating and cooling systems, building envelope improvements, and renewable energy sources to fulfill their commitments to combat the impact of site-based fossil fuel usage. The challenge they face is how to make these upgrades while controlling construction and operating costs.
Estimated Construction Cost: $18,000,000
Potential Grants & Incentives: $6,770,000
RESULTS
Beginning in 2021, B2Q was tasked with performing an HVAC Upgrade Options study to evaluate the feasibility of converting the existing HVAC systems to air-source heat pump or geothermal technology. In 2022, the City of Beverly selected the geothermal solution as their preferred HVAC upgrade option and chose B2Q as the Prime Design Consultant.
As a first step in the design process, B2Q and their team installed a geothermal test well and performed a formation thermal conductivity test to understand the thermal properties of the proposed well field location. The Library was also analyzed for envelope tightness via a blower door test and a comprehensive infrared scan of the building’s exterior walls. The results of the building envelope test revealed that the Library is very leaky and that the sloped metal roof should be considered for replacement in order to reduce the size of the geothermal well field and avoid an electric service upgrade.
B2Q worked with the City of Beverly to review a number of design alternatives but ultimately selected distributed ground-source heat pumps as the preferred option, as it minimized the building’s energy consumption and resolved several HVAC design and control deficiencies that had impacted the building for many years. B2Q progressed the geothermal design to the construction document level and the building interior design to the design development level.
Market:
Public Sector
Services:
Energy Efficiency & Analysis
Electrification
Building Decarbonization
Feasibility Study
Geothermal Heat Pump
Project Design
