DeLand Middle School

Located in Volusia County, Florida, DeLand Middle School serves over 1,000 sixth through eighth grade students with nearly 70 faculty members. When originally built in 1981, DeLand Middle School utilized a water source heat pumpbased heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system. To meet the needs of its expanding student population, the school board initiated a 140,000f2 school renovation and HVAC system upgrade which would need to achieve three specific goals. First, implement a new HVAC system solution that would help reduce energy consumption. Second, ensure the new HVAC equipment would have acceptable acoustic levels for a residential neighborhood due to an adjacent apartment complex while providing better sound levels in classrooms to help improve learning. Third, provide a new campus-wide control system to precisely meet the comfort needs of the students and faculty.

Project Solution

While attending a Carrier engineering conference highlighting the AquaForce® 30XV air-cooled screw chiller with Greenspeed® intelligence, the senior HVAC construction project manager for Volusia County Schools was able to witness the chiller operating at full load. Impressed by the energy efficiency of its variable-speed technology, sound-sensitive acoustics and small footprint, he subsequently selected two AquaForce® 30XV-250 ton high-tier variable frequency drive (VFD) screw chillers as basis for design for the DeLand Middle School HVAC upgrade project. Additionally, the project was specified with ten Aero® 39MN air-handling units, 117 variable air volume (VAV) units and a campus-wide Automated Logic Corporation (ALC) control system. Due to the efficiency of the 30XV chillers, the local utility, Duke Energy, issued a $24,610 rebate to Volusia County Schools.