Share thisFacility profiles at the Texas A&M University and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
By facility type, vivaria rank as one of the highest in consumption of utilities and materials in a research building’s operation. Some other challenges include a large production of waste and ensuring that the indoor environmental quality is safe and conducive for technicians and staff. Designing new vivaria facilities and upgrading existing ones to address these concerns are much easier said than done. Equipment demands, regional climatic conditions, species type, operations/ safety protocols, maintenance issues, manpower, and proper care and use of animals are just some of the many variables affecting the types of sustainable strategies that may be integrated in a vivarium facility design. Two such facilities located on the campuses of the Sanford-Burnham Institute in Orlando, Florida and the Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas offer insight from built and fully operational accounts of what is possible in designing a green vivarium. This article will discuss strategies on how to reduce overall water consumption, efficiently manage HVAC, reduce air change and lighting loads, and improve indoor quality.
Texas A&M University
The 10,000-square-foot rodent vivarium at the Texas A&M University campus is part of a mixed use laboratory facility built to enhance research interactions across multiple disciplines. Nestled between biological lab spaces on the upper floor of a three-story building, the vivarium will be utilized by various disciplines, including structural biology, genomics and proteomics engineering, to support neurological and behavioral research. Being part of a new generation of technologically and environmentally advanced facilities, this building has been designed and programmed with multiple sustainable strategies (as shown in Figure 1) encompassing reduction in water consumption, energy and equipment efficiency, and improved indoor environmental quality. Some major challenges to implementing these strategies include dealing with a hot humid Texas climate and the heavy utility demand from large equipment in the vivarium and associated lab spaces.
The vivarium suite has been designed to include all the amenities necessary for full operation without having personnel exit and re-enter throughout a typical work day. This requires the suite to have its own separate facilities for showers and changing, break rooms, offices, and equipment spaces in addition to the standard program spaces for a vivarium. Locating the vivarium directly under the mechanical penthouse and providing an interstitial floor between the penthouse and vivarium floor has allowed minimal piping runs to the suite and provided space for storage and maintenance of the HEPA filters serving the animal rooms.
A bagged watering system is used for delivering water to the animal cages as well as providing emergency water storage. This system provides high water efficiency in comparison to bottled water because there is no spillage and no need for bottles that require weekly washing. It also eliminates the issue of flushing out large amounts of water to prevent biofilm build up as needed for automatic watering systems. Although the bagged watering system uses single use polypropylene bags, these are recyclable.
In the case of equipment water demand for the facility, the cage and rack washers, as well as the tunnel washer have water saving technology that collects and re-circulates the final rinse water for other uses such as the pre-wash cycle and re-circulated wash. The re-circulating tanks save up to 75 percent of the water that is normally used for this type of equipment. As part of the building-wide water efficiency strategies, all HVAC units are connected to a water storage cistern that collects 100 percent of the condensate from each unit. The units produce around 400,000 gallons of water annually; combined with the storm water runoff captured from the building’s roof, the HVAC units provide enough water to meet all the landscape irrigation needs of the building’s site. With these multiple water saving strategies, the building was able to reduce its annual water consumption by 40 percent compared to a similar building type.