Oakland University
The existing High-Temperature Hot Water supply and return lines to the Oakland University Hill House residence hall are currently located within direct buried piping that is failing and leaking steam back into the existing tunnel system.
Oakland University plans to replace the existing system with a new half tunnel from the HTHW tunnel to the Hill House connection to improve system reliability and maintainability.
Commonwealth’s solution for this project included reviewing, validating, and updating the HED design drawings for the North Foundation Hall provided to OU.
For this task, Commonwealth performed an initial field investigation to review the North Foundation Hall installation, verify the installation of the Hill House supply lines in the new vault installed upstream of the half tunnel to North Foundation Hall, and inspect and evaluate the Hill House manhole OU has indicated requires replacement.
After the field investigation, Commonwealth performed all design calculations necessary to support the development of detailed design drawings and specifications.
To minimize design costs, Commonwealth worked with Oakland University to incorporate lessons learned from the North Foundation Hall project into the design while reusing those portions of the design that have been successfully operating.
