Utah State University
New EEJ Early Childhood Education Building
Logan, Utah

The USU Early Childhood project is approximately 65,000 square feet. The three story building supports classrooms, offices, research, and children’s spaces. The building has been designed incorporating sustainable design measures and meets the State of Utah High Performance Building Rating System, which has been determined to be comparable to a LEED Silver rating. The mechanical system for this building is a 4 pipe system, with VAV reheat. It includes a tunnel extension for campus supplied steam and chilled water. The mechanical equipment was designed to be maintenance friendly, sound sensitive, and energy efficient.

In addition to the standard of care that was taken to meet the needs of the State of Utah and USU, additional mechanical design considerations were included for the children’s areas. The building was designed to accommodate offices and research on the upper levels, but also to accommodate typical children as well as children with special hearing needs on the first level. The mechanical systems were customized to minimize noise for sound sensitive children. They were also closely coordinated with the architectural systems to provide a unique and fun appearance and learning environment in the classroom wings.

The toddler areas were designed to include radiant floor heating in order to accommodate children who play and sleep on the floors.  The fresh air intakes were designed to pull air from the second story to get cleaner and fresher air.  All of these accommodations were integrated into the design to provide a better overall environment for all the different types of people occupying this building.

WHW Engineering, Inc. was the mechanical engineer consultant to the project Architect, Jacoby Architects.