What does a company do when they are out of real estate and need to add a large cooling tower and reservoir to support plant performance?

Not too long ago, a great customer asked us to visit him to discuss a perplexing problem. Upon arrival he showed us an overhead view of his facility. He then said, “where can we place a new large cooling tower and even larger water reservoir?” His rooftop was already full with cooling towers and air abatement equipment. He was boxed in on all four sides by streets on two sides, a hospital on one side and a parking garage on the other side.

We were puzzled as was he.

After a few quiet minutes of everybody thinking of options, he then said –“guess what— VITOK is going to design an elevated 1,000,000 gallon concrete reservoir and the cooling tower will be placed on top of it. It will be located over the existing parking lot, and we intend to not lose any parking spaces. How is that for a challenge?”

Of course, VITOK’s response was—“when do we start?”

And the customers answer to us was—”immediately, unless you can start sooner!” Obviously, it turned into a fast track project, with detailed engineering running along with some preconstruction/demolition work.

The picture (below) shows the massive size of the reservoir that holds over 1,000,000.gallons of cooling water. It is a fully cast-in-place concrete structure, with the concrete support columns being load tested to 50-ton basis. The design of the reservoir system also had to offer complete support for the 10,000 GPM cooling tower.

Once complete, the system operated very satisfactorily, and they lost only one parking place.

This project has been completed for several years and with continuous operation, with no leaks and full cooling performance.

Should you have the need for some specialty systems design, please don’t hesitate to contact VITOK Engineers.