Church Sanctuary Air Conditioning Addition
Client: Akron-area Catholic Church
Location: Northeast Ohio, Akron, Portage County
Problem
A local, Northeast Ohio Catholic church in Portage County had been considering the idea of adding air conditioning to their sanctuary area but needed help coming up with solution that did not ruin the appearance of the beautiful ceiling work that rose all of the way to the peak of the roof.
- The church was designed and built originally with no air conditioning in the sanctuary.
- The sanctuary had no attic with the ceiling of the sanctuary rising all of the way to the peak of the roof.
- Couldn’t put packaged units on the roof because it was made out of a highly pitched slate roofing material.
- Packaged units on the ground would have been unsightly with ductwork extending up the sides of the building. Long window wells outside of the building made it difficult to locate large packaged units.
Solution
Our solution consisted of the following.
- We performed an engineering analysis of the amount of cooling needed to cool the sanctuary.
- Instead of using standard packaged or split systems, we chose to use more efficient, mitsubishi ductless mini-split systems.
- We were able to independently zone eight different sections of the sanctuary which meant that the new cooling system could respond to varying cooling needs within the large sanctuary.
- Because the air handler portion of the ductless minisplit mounts right on the wall we were able to avoid having to run unsightly ductwork through the space. The new units are mounted high on the wall out of the typical line of site so they don’t ruin the asthetics of the space.
- The respective condensing units were small and therefor didn’t detract from the beautiful outside appearance of the building. We were able to build custom steel mounting platforms which allowed us to position the condensing units over the window wells.
Equipment
- Ductless Mitsubishi Mini-split Air Conditioning Systems
- Custom designed/fabricated steel condensing unit mounting platforms