Case Study - Trane

Case Study
New Eddie Bauer
Facility Emphasizes
Environmental Quality,
Comfort
Redmond, Washington
What springs to mind when you hear the
name Eddie Bauer? Mail order. Casual
clothing. Outdoors. Quality products and
service. This mail order giant was founded
some 75 years ago in Seattle, Washington.
Today Eddie Bauer is a $1.5 billion global
company with revenues split between mail
order and retail stores. The company has
nearly 450 retail stores.
Eddie Bauer management is quick to point
out that its customers come first. But Eddie
Bauer is in the customer service business,
so not far behind are its people. It takes
exceptional people to provide exceptional
service. As Eddie Bauer grew and added
staff, it acquired and leased office space
throughout the Seattle area.
But today Eddie Bauer employees, called
corporate associates, are concentrated in
five buildings on the new Redmond,
Washington campus.
It had become time to bring its people
home, says Jim Noetzelman, manager of
corporate planning and construction for
Eddie Bauer. Part of this complex is a new
225,000 square foot headquarters facility.
The building is uniquely Eddie Bauer.
Imagine a ranch-style home with a hipped
roof set among tall firs. Scale it up in size
and you’ve got the new Eddie Bauer
headquarters facility. It is a striking building,
in part due to what is described as a floating
or fly roof, a visually distinctive feature in its
home community. It is not the largest
structure in Redmond, but it is the most
unusual.

Trane Air-cooled Series R ®
Rotary Chillers Preferred
Environmentally Sound
and Functional
While appearance and setting are
important, function is overriding. This
building works for the people within it
and those outside. It’s an
environmentally responsible structure.
Eddie Bauer has always been an
environmentally conscious company,
and with this building it took the
opportunity to do even more.
Noetzelman talks enthusiastically about
what was done in this new building for
energy conservation, indoor air quality,
flexibility, environmental responsibility,
quality and affordability. Not only does
Eddie Bauer believe that what they are
doing is the right thing environmentally
— it will save money. It’s just good
business. Both Noetzelman and Tom
Helm, senior project manager for
mechanical design firm Holaday Parks,
agree it’s possible to be environmentally
conscious and save money at the same
time.
After the initial design was completed,
the design team went through a
painstaking process of value engineering
to reduce cost without compromising
goals. They squeezed 20 percent out of
the cost. Says Noetzelman, “Being cost
effective is being
environmentally conscious. It
doesn’t cost more. Just the
opposite. We were able to put
into the building everything we
wanted that made sense from
a technology standpoint.
Whether it was more efficient
lighting or better HVAC, we
were able to do it. We really
appreciate what our
consultants have done for us.”
HVAC System
The HVAC system is a Trane
IntelliPak ® rooftop — VAV
system with a Tracer Summit ®
building automation system.
While efficient in itself, the
© American Standard Inc. 1997
system has a couple of important twists
that improve performance.
Eddie Bauer has not had any major
indoor air quality incidents, but they’ve
encountered the issue enough to
heighten their awareness and sensitize
them to the need to deal with it
effectively in the new building. The
system has a factory-installed air
monitoring and control station, called
“…it’s so simple. It will provide real
world, better quality air for very little
cost impact. And it provides defensible
verification.”
TraqTM , built right into the rooftop unit
and tied to the automation system.
Properly ventilating a VAV system can be
a real challenge. The Traq outdoor air
dampers coupled with Tracer Summit
and DDC controls on the VAV terminals
simplified compliance with ASHRAE
ventilation standard 62-1989 and with the
more stringent Washington state
ventilation code. It achieves this while
optimizing energy so as to avoid an
The Tracer building automatio
system monitors, logs and
verifies the correct amount of
ventilation air in each zone.
The state-of-the-art rooftop
comfort system is installed in a
mezzanine area to maintain
architectural integrity of the
building.

n
energy penalty for providing adequate
outside air. The Traq system dynamically
calculates and simultaneously delivers
just the right amount of outside air
needed at that specific time; no more and
no less.
Importantly, the Tracer ® automation
system logs the amount of air being
delivered through the DDC/VAV units to
each zone. Now the system operator can
easily verify that the correct amount of
ventilation air has reached each zone and
“We can just keep moving the sensors
around until we find exactly the right
location.”
not just entered the building. The best
part of the system according to Holaday
Parks’ Tom Helm is “…it’s so simple. It
will provide real world, better quality air
for very little cost impact. And it provides
defensible verification.”
Flexibility, Comfort,
Efficiency
New technology comes into play in
another important way to allow Eddie
Bauer to realize its need for flexibility, as
well as comfort. The building features
Trane wireless zone sensors for localized
control. These operate on spread
spectrum radio technology. Each wireless
sensor, about the size of a typical
thermostat, is assigned to one or more
VAV boxes. Also, multiple sensors can be
assigned to one box to achieve an
averaging effect for larger zones.
As space layouts change, VAV diffusers
can be moved within the ceiling and zone
sensors, often attached to the wall by
VelcroTM , can be easily relocated.
Jim Noetzelman is excited about the
possibilities. “We can just keep moving
the sensors around until we find exactly
the right location.”
Another useful feature is ventilation
override, which allows occupants of
densely occupied areas such as
conference rooms to manually increase
the amount of fresh air delivered to the

space with the push of a button. Other
ventilation strategies are used within the
building to optimize the use of
conditioned air, including such strategies
as preflushing building zones in advance
of use.
While comfort and flexibility are
important, so is energy efficiency. Tom
Helm describes the HVAC system as a
common sense, high quality system. It
is simple and effective. Cooling is
provided by the three IntelliPaks ® to
series fan-power VAV units with electric
heat. Supply and exhaust fans are run by
inverters to optimize energy
consumption. The inverters qualified for
grant funding from Puget Sound Power
and Light.
Using outdoor air for cooling in place
of the refrigeration cycle reduces
operating costs significantly.
System Controls
To monitor and control system
operation, the IntelliPak rooftops have
microprocessor-based unit control
modules (UCM) in place of
electromechanical controls. The units
are programmed to operate on the
economizer cycle when the outdoor
temperature is below 55 F. Using
outdoor air for cooling in place of the
refrigeration cycle reduces operating
costs significantly.
The IntelliPak rooftop — VAV packaged
air conditioning systems come equipped
with factory engineered, installed,
tested and commissioned direct digital
controls. Besides controlling all rooftop
functions, these microprocessors
contain safety controls and the ability to
monitor all active diagnostics. They also
maintain a history of the previous 20 unit
The Trane Company
North American Commercial Group
3600 Pammel Creek Road
La Crosse, WI 54601-7599
www.trane.com
An American Standard Company
1
diagnostics to facilitate system
troubleshooting. Service and
maintenance are simplified by the
availability of information through the
Tracer Summit ® system using color
graphics.
It was time for Eddie Bauer associates
to come home from their widely
Since The Trane Company has a policy of continuous
product improvement, it reserves the right to change
design and specification without notice
dispersed facilities. The company’s
goals were simple: Create a cost
effective, functional facility that would
fit its casual personality. This was
accomplished by using a system of
new technologies never before used in
a total, integrated system.
Eddie Bauer management is
dedicated to providing a comfortable
working environment for its
associates.
CASE-X-43 July 1997
New
MP-000-CASE-X-43-797