The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Inc. plans to put its money where its mouth is—and a bit more. Not only is ASHRAE spending $5.4 million to upgrade its Atlanta headquarters to meet its own energy conservation standards, it is going for the gold seal of approval from the LEED green-building rating system. Beyond that, the group decided to renovate its 31,000-sq-ft building, adding only a 4,000-sq-ft section for a learning center, rather than taking the less-sustainable approach of building totally from scratch.

The committee decided to go for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED gold certification rather than platinum rating so that it could continue to use components of the building that were still viable. A platinum rating would most likely have required changes to the building envelope, which ASHRAE wanted to leave intact.

On the second floor, a ground-source heat-pump system, which relies on fluid in a closed-loop of piping in a series of wells, will absorb heat in summer and provide heat in winter months. Harrison says the wells will replace conventional roof-mounted air conditioning and heating units.

Both floors will share an energy-efficient, dedicated outside-air system. The system “recycles” air that would normally be exhausted from the building by using it to pretreat incoming air through a heat exchanger. Though the actual outgoing air is not reused, its energy could, for instance, be used in the summer to chill warmer incoming air from outside, says Harrison.

Plans also call for energy-conservative lighting. Open-plan interior workstations will let daylight into office cubicles. Daylight and lighting controls are expected to minimize artificial light.

ASHRAE also is planning to use construction materials with low levels of volatile organic compounds and a roof-mounted 20-kW photovoltaic array to produce electricity, says Harrison.

Gay Construction Co., Smyrna, Ga., expects to begin work this month. The job includes installing instruments and meters to record building energy use and other data so the space can be used as a living laboratory for HVAC-system research. Through a Web interface, ASHRAE members all over the world will be able to monitor the new space’s performance.

Designing for ASHRAE is a unique if not somewhat intimidating experience, says Thom Wille, project mechanical engineer for Johnson, Spillman, and an ASHRAE member. “In other projects, there are sometimes a few knowledgeable people, maybe an owner, who have a certain set of systems in mind,” he says. “Working for ASHRAE is like designing your professor's house.”