ODOT Completes Efficiency Research Project

With special thanks to our wonderful partners at JadeTrack, Gresham Smith & Partners, and the University of Dayton, we are proud to have recently completed a 6-month research project for the Ohio Department of Transportation.

The project, designed to investigate more efficient ways to heat and operate ODOT maintenance facilities, was a very successful first step toward the department’s future goals. The next step will be to find a future building project that can incorporate our results and do some real-world testing on the functionality and benefits of the findings. This will be especially focused on the use of hydronic floor heating to heat the maintenance bays and de-ice the trucks.

Driven internally by ODOT’s northwest District 2, this research is just a part of the many things the organization is doing to help push Ohio into the future. The department clearly has energy efficiency in mind, and has already made great strides to help reduce expenses and save taxpayer money. Things like LED high bay lighting, de-stratifying fans, building automation systems, and reduced temperature setpoints are already common, especially in District 2 where many of these items are undertaken as soon as funding will allow. They are ahead of many businesses in the commercial sector, and constantly looking for ways to reduce even further.

While the initial drive of the project was to investigate the cost effectiveness of heating technologies like radiant floors, many other energy conservation measures were identified throughout the project. These included new LED lighting, onsite solar generation, replacement of various HVAC equipment to upgrade from ozone depleting R20 (being phased out of the US) to R410a refrigerant, upgrades to high efficiency boilers and domestic hot water heaters, rapid seal overhead doors, and building automation strategies to further reduce waste energy use.

Once published, the final results of this research will be posted for the public at the following link.

Thank you to Greg Strausbaugh, Rustin Ballmer, Eric Moser, and Jill Martindale from the ODOT team for their continued leadership throughout the project!