GENEVA BARTON LAB – CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Plant pathologists and entomologists at Cornell University’s Barton Laboratory in Geneva, NY spend their days researching how insects positively or negatively affect plants, how to identify and treat plant diseases and ways to effectively manage insects for large scale agricultural systems. An integral foundation of this work, in addition to the 65,000SF of greenhouse space available, is to have small controlled environments where the intricacies of plant and insect growth can be studied.
The six-story building where these studies take place totals ~83,000SF and was constructed in 1969. The environment controlled plant growth chambers and additional building systems have not been updated since construction. In an effort and improve the energy efficiency of the growth chambers and the entire building, Cornell University hired Taitem engineers to investigate options for upgrading the existing mechanical systems.
After visiting the lab and conducting energy and life cycle cost analyses of the proposed options, our engineers concluded that the option to install an air source VRF heat pump would provide the shortest payback period and create considerably fewer emissions than the other two options.
YEAR 2019
SIZE 83,000SF