The 13-story Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay hotel is located inside a 35-acre nature preserve just outside downtown Tampa, Florida. Recently, a $16 million dollar renovation was completed, ensuring the Grand Hyatt’s reputation for being one of Tampa’s premiere luxury hotels. 

The Challenge:

ATS Waypoint was given a challenge by Stewart Engineering Consultants Ltd. of Sarasota, Florida, and the owner, UBS; provide the hotel occupants with complete temperature control of their rooms while still maintaining humidity control in all 400 rooms without using supplemental heat.

The Hyatt was having difficulty with providing a completely hypoallergenic sleeping environment due to elevated humidity levels.

The tropical environment on the West Coast of Florida can overtax most BMS systems. Hotels always present an added complexity by needing to satisfy the hundreds of different environmental needs for each guest room independently while still maintaining overall control of the building’s central systems and reducing overall energy expenses as much as possible.

With a yearly average of 74% relative humidity, traditionally, the only option was a reheat dehumidification system.

While effective, the energy cost is prohibitive through over-cooling and then reheating air back to the user’s setpoint rather than simply being able to control the temperature directly. There had to be a better way.

The Solution:

A two-part plan was implemented to deal with each room individually as well as centrally dehumidify at the main rooftop air handlers. In the guest rooms, the fan coil cooling coils were replaced, allowing more capacity to remove more moisture, while new HPT heat pipe systems were added to the existing air handling units. ATS provided a complete control package, including modulating chilled water valves and humidity sensing via Delta’s DNS-H24 space sensors, DAC-322 controllers installed in each room’s fan coil unit, and eBCON modular controllers within the central plant. All hardware comes back to a new ORCAview operator workstation located in the facilities, complete with a dynamic 3D graphic package.

The Benefits:

Simply being able to enter a guest room without feeling moisture in the soft furnishings was, of course the primary goal. What was delivered exceeded this goal by a wide margin.

$37,000 will be saved yearly. Even when the humidity is above 75% and temperatures are soaring, the guest rooms at the Grand Hyatt are always a comfortable 60% RH. The only way this could be achieved is through the new control strategy implemented by ATS.

One of the key selling features for Grand Hyatt hotels is their PURE – Hypoallergenic Rooms. Through PURE’s filtration processes coupled with ATS’s complete BMS control package, 99% of pollutants are removed from the guest rooms and can provide the highest air quality to their guests. Without the ability to control the humidity within the guest rooms, there is no way that the hotel would be able to achieve the high standards that PURE sets out.

The Results:

From the first three test rooms, ATS has been granted the guest rooms and all ongoing renovation phases throughout the facility and associated private suites. The next phases of the Tampa Grand Hyatt will be common areas and conference room air handlers. From there, work has also been scheduled for extensive BMS renovations at the neighboring Bayport Plaza.

By the numbers, this has been an astonishing success:

• 464,000 Kilowatt hours saved each year
• $37,000 in yearly savings
• 110-ton reduction in CO2 emissions
• 3.5-year ROI

In 2009, Noble Investments opened an 8‐floor, 217-room hotel with a restaurant and ballroom spaces. A chilled water system provides cooling to air handling units, which serve VAV terminal units throughout the common areas. A smoke exhaust system is controlled via the ATS Waypoint installed Alerton control system to provide life safety to the occupants.

The Stegeman Coliseum is a 10,523‐seat multi‐purpose arena located on the University of Georgia campus. The scope of ATS Waypoint’s work included a 35,000 sqft renovation and 6,000 sqft of new space. The project received an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects, a Historic Preservation Award from Athens Clarke County Building Society, and an Award of Merit from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America.

The project was completed in 2010 and included two large custom air handling units installed to provide air conditioning to the new concession concourses. The existing air handling units remained to serve the arena. Several new fan coil units were also supplied to condition office space located in the basement.

Located in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, The Waldorf Astoria Atlanta is a 580-foot tall building completed in 2008. It is the 12th tallest building in Atlanta and the fifteenth tallest residential high‐rise in the United States. The building consists of 14 stories of luxury hotel rooms and 28 floors of high-end residential condominiums. A large chilled water central plant supplies chilled water to air handling units that serve the common areas of the hotel, while a condenser water plant provides for a heat rejection system for the residential heat pump units. A carbon monoxide system was also installed to conserve energy in the parking garage.

Built in 2013, this 5‐story, 39,856 sqft, 150-room hotel with an adjacent two‐story parking garage is located in historic Savannah, GA. An air-cooled chilled water plant serves AHUs with VAVs for the common spaces of the hotel. Makeup air units provide conditioned air to the corridors.

The Ascent Hotel is a 176-room venture that will be a part of Ascent Midtown, rising between West Peachtree and Spring Streets at 18th Street.

Ponce City Market is a 2,100,000 sqft mixed-use development in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward with a long and storied history. The building was used as the regional headquarters of Sears, Roebuck and Co. from 1926 to 1987 and by the City of Atlanta as “City Hall East” from 1990 to 2010. Renovations by Jamestown were ongoing from 2011 to 2014. ATS Waypoint was heavily involved in this building, providing and installing a full BACnet control system with a browser interface, condenser water plants, cooling towers, and multiple HVAC units to the retail, office, and residential spaces within the structure.

Perimeter Mall is the second-largest mall in the state of Georgia. General Growth Properties manages the mall, which has been open since 1971. In 2015, ATS Waypoint performed extensive work on the building, upgrading the building automation system and providing and installing RTUs to heat and cool the mall’s common areas and tenant spaces. ATS also installed and supplied the controls for the mall’s parking lot and security lighting.

photo by Mike Kalasnik (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In 2012 Noble Investments renovated this 5‐story‐179 room hotel located in the heart of historic downtown Decatur. Chilled water air handling units provide conditioning for the common area spaces on the lobby level.