Share thisFour years after building a new animal facility, the authors reflect on the process of commissioning the physical plant of a now AAALAC-accredited animal facility and the complications that arose. Here, they share their experiences and solutions, which might be of some benefit to other groups in the process of animal facility commissioning.
Planning
Upon learning that a new campus was actually going to be a reality, the Engineering and Department of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DLAM) of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation - Research Institute began developing a wish list for the optimum animal facility both in design and functionality. Knowing that all projects get value engineered once the actual building costs become a reality, the original proposals were slightly extravagant.
HVAC
In the planning stage, after receiving original design/build documents, we decided to have computational fluid dynamics4 performed on the animal holding rooms. The HVAC system was designed to center around an automatic building control system, Automated Logic Corporation (ALC).5 In this case, the hardware for the system consists of two independent air-handling systems. Each system has its own refrigeration compressors and condensers and separate air-handlers. The two systems share a twin boiler system. Between the air-handlers, a crossover duct and dampers were installed. In the event of animal facility air-handler failure, the crossover duct will open, borrowing enough air from the larger main building duct to heat or cool the animal facility. The exhaust system was sized so that two fans would be adequate to handle the entire building load. An additional fan was installed in order to provide backup and additional exhaust in the event of air-handler failure. With three fans running, enough negative pressure would be provided to draw fresh air into the building through the existing ductwork.
Monitoring and Security
We selected an animal facility monitoring system from Edstrom Industries.6 The system is capable of not only monitoring the environmental conditions of the facility, but could also be used as an additional animal facility security system and a source of reverse osmosis water. Even though the building control system could supply environmental data, the desire for ultimately being able to split the Engineering department from DLAM was attractive.
Back-ups
Our old facility lacked sufficient backup systems; the design group wanted to ensure that a similar problem did not occur at the new site. We incorporated equipment backups and monitoring backups into every aspect of the animal facility. Instead of one large autoclave, we purchased two smaller units for day-to-day use. To supplement these autoclaves, we brought a recently reconditioned autoclave from our old site and supplemented that with a new stand-alone unit in the glass wash area which is located on the same level as the animal facility allowing easy access for both groups. To run all this equipment in the event of a power outage a 460hp diesel generator replaced the numerous smaller units we had used previously.
Post-occupancy Problems
Testing and commissioning took place in early 2000. Our first concern was the dreaded Y2K problem, which might have affected our computer systems. Having passed that hurdle we preceded into occupying the facility only to find that there were numerous problems primarily associated with the HVAC system. Built into the HVAC systems were various energy saving modes. The original programming had been set so that the system would conserve energy during the unoccupied periods by reducing heat and airflow. With the use of variable frequency drives, the incoming air supply was to back off as occupancy was reduced such as nights and weekends. What we found after a few months of testing was a major change in the differential pressure in the animal holding rooms. This effect was so great that we noticed that doors were actually holding open at times during the off hours.