Mechanical room

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Mechanical room in a large office building. Mechanical room.jpg
Mechanical room in a large office building.
Mechanical room in federal building, Los Angeles, California Mechanical room in basement. Federal building at 300 N. Los Angeles Blvd. in Los Angeles, California LCCN2016648321.tif
Mechanical room in federal building, Los Angeles, California

A mechanical room, [1] boiler room or plant room is a technical room or space in a building dedicated to the mechanical equipment and its associated electrical equipment, as opposed to rooms intended for human occupancy or storage. Unless a building is served by a centralized heating plant, the size of the mechanical room is usually proportional to the size of the building. A small building or home may have at most a utility room but in larger buildings, mechanical rooms can be of considerable size, often requiring multiple rooms throughout the building, or even occupying one or more complete floors (see: mechanical floor).

Contents

Technical rooms in residential houses typically house technical equipment such as air handling units, central heating, electric panels or water heaters, or gives easy access to utilities such as a building's internal stop-tap for water supply, inspection holes for greywater or sewage lines.

Equipment

Mechanical rooms typically house the following equipment: [1]

Equipment in mechanical rooms is often operated and maintained by a stationary engineer or a maintenance technician. Modern buildings use building automation systems to manage HVAC cycles, lighting, communications, and life safety equipment. Often, the control system hardware is located in the mechanical room and monitored or accessed remotely.

Rooms with only electrical or electronic equipment are not considered mechanical rooms but are instead called electrical rooms.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HVAC system design is a subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. "Refrigeration" is sometimes added to the field's abbreviation as HVAC&R or HVACR, or "ventilation" is dropped, as in HACR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boiler</span> Closed vessel in which fluid is heated

A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central heating, boiler-based power generation, cooking, and sanitation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Furnace (central heating)</span> Device used for heating buildings

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thermostat</span> Component which maintains a setpoint temperature

A thermostat is a regulating device component which senses the temperature of a physical system and performs actions so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Water heating</span> Thermodynamic process that uses energy sources to heat water

Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated to steam have many uses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basement</span> Below-ground floor of a building

A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. Especially in residential buildings, it often is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system are located; so also are amenities such as the electrical system and cable television distribution point. In cities with high property prices, such as London, basements are often fitted out to a high standard and used as living space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central heating</span> Type of heating system

A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Storage heater</span>

A storage heater or heat bank (Australia) is an electrical heater which stores thermal energy during the evening, or at night when electricity is available at lower cost, and releases the heat during the day as required. Alternatively, solar storage heaters are designed to store solar energy as heat, to be released during the night or other periods where it is required, often making it more cost effective than selling surplus electricity to the grid and buying it back at night.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanical floor</span> Mechanical rooms-only skyscraper section

A mechanical floor, mechanical penthouse, mechanical layer or mechanical level is a story of a high-rise building that is dedicated to mechanical and electronics equipment. "Mechanical" is the most commonly used term, but words such as utility, technical, service, and plant are also used. They are present in all tall buildings, including the world's tallest skyscrapers, with significant structural, mechanical and aesthetics concerns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydronics</span> Use of liquid or gaseous water in heating or cooling systems

Hydronics is the use of liquid water or gaseous water (steam) or a water solution as a heat-transfer medium in heating and cooling systems. The name differentiates such systems from oil and refrigerant systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electric heating</span> Process in which electrical energy is converted to heat

Electric heating is a process in which electrical energy is converted directly to heat energy. Common applications include space heating, cooking, water heating and industrial processes. An electric heater is an electrical device that converts an electric current into heat. The heating element inside every electric heater is an electrical resistor, and works on the principle of Joule heating: an electric current passing through a resistor will convert that electrical energy into heat energy. Most modern electric heating devices use nichrome wire as the active element; the heating element, depicted on the right, uses nichrome wire supported by ceramic insulators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Equipment room</span>

A technical room or equipment room is a room where technical equipment has been installed, for example for controlling a building's climate, electricity, water and wastewater. The equipment can include electric panels, central heating, heat network, machinery for ventilation systems, air conditioning, various types of pumps and boilers, as well as telecommunications equipment. It can serve one or more housing units or buildings.

A heating system is a mechanism for maintaining temperatures at an acceptable level; by using thermal energy within a home, office, or other dwelling. Typically, these systems are a crucial part of an HVAC system. A heating system can be categorized into central heating system or distributed systems, depending on their design and method of heat distribution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underfloor heating</span> Form of central heating and cooling

Underfloor heating and cooling is a form of central heating and cooling that achieves indoor climate control for thermal comfort using hydronic or electrical heating elements embedded in a floor. Heating is achieved by conduction, radiation and convection. Use of underfloor heating dates back to the Neoglacial and Neolithic periods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fan coil unit</span> HVAC device

A fan coil unit (FCU), also known as a Vertical Fan Coil-Unit (VFC), is a device consisting of a heat exchanger (coil) and a fan. FCUs are commonly used in HVAC systems of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings that use ducted split air conditioning or with central plant cooling. FCUs are typically connected to ductwork and a thermostat to regulate the temperature of one or more spaces and to assist the main air handling unit for each space if used with chillers. The thermostat controls the fan speed and/or the flow of water or refrigerant to the heat exchanger using a control valve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radiator (heating)</span> Heat exchanger for space heating

Radiators and convectors are heat exchangers designed to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of space heating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanical systems drawing</span>

Mechanical systems drawing is a type of technical drawing that shows information about heating, ventilating, air conditioning and transportation around the building. It is a powerful tool that helps analyze complex systems. These drawings are often a set of detailed drawings used for construction projects; it is a requirement for all HVAC work. They are based on the floor and reflected ceiling plans of the architect. After the mechanical drawings are complete, they become part of the construction drawings, which is then used to apply for a building permit. They are also used to determine the price of the project.

HVAC is a major sub discipline of mechanical engineering. The goal of HVAC design is to balance indoor environmental comfort with other factors such as installation cost, ease of maintenance, and energy efficiency. The discipline of HVAC includes a large number of specialized terms and acronyms, many of which are summarized in this glossary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tankless water heating</span> Water heaters that instantly heat water as it flows through the device

Tankless water heaters — also called instantaneous, continuous flow, inline, flash, on-demand, or instant-on water heaters — are water heaters that instantly heat water as it flows through the device, and do not retain any water internally except for what is in the heat exchanger coil unless the unit is equipped with an internal buffer tank. Copper heat exchangers are preferred in these units because of their high thermal conductivity and ease of fabrication. However, copper heat exchangers are more susceptible to scale buildup than stainless steel heat exchangers.

References

  1. 1 2 "Mechanical Room Definition". Law Insider.