Lake Will Help Heat, Cool New Hospital

摘要

Scheduled for completion in early 2010, the new Sherman Hospital, in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, will experience significant savings in its heating and cooling costs-perhaps more than $1 million annually-from a lake recently constructed as part of the hospital's new campus. In addition to being part of an indirect heat exchange system that will help cool the building in summer and warm it in winter, the lake will collect storm-water runoff. The 100-year-old hospital is relocating from its 13 acre (5 ha) urban site to a 154 acre (62 ha) campus, which was recently a cornfield, overlooking a 25 acre (10 ha) forest preserve. Hospital officials requested that the master plan for the new campus reflect the institution's twin goals of providing a healing environment for patients and honoring the principles of sustainable development. The project includes a 650,000 sq ft (60,385 m~2) hospital divided into two portions: a seven-story tower containing the patient rooms and a structure ranging in height from two to four stories that houses the hospital's other facilities. The site will also have a 100,000 sq ft (9,290 m~2) medical office building. According to Don Matthews, P.E., M.ASCE, the project manager for Gewalt Hamilton Associates, Inc., of Vernon Hills, Illinois, the firm handling the civil engineering for the campus, the hospital will overlook the lake, which has been carefully designed to behave much like a natural one.