While the chiller project has garnered a lot of attention, the hotel has expanded its energy- and water-saving measures elsewhere inside and outside the facility. For example, the hotel uses 100 percent reclaimed water to irrigate its golf course, and it is converting 8-10 acres of hotel grounds to reclaim water.
“Central Florida, and Florida as a whole, is a lot like other places where water is becoming very precious,” Plutz says.
All 2,000 guestrooms also have 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm) flow restrictors in the sinks and 2.5 gpm showerheads.
“Water savings is a very hard thing to attribute to one thing or another, given the fact that our convention center is very big,” he says. “If we have customers that are in that are not really having a lot of meetings here, that year-over-year analysis is very hard to tell you what the savings are.
“We know it’s the right thing to do for the environment and preserving the resources.”
The hotel also has changed about 1,450 T-12 magnetic ballasts to T-8 electronic ballasts. The actual ballast conversion is not that difficult, but because the facility had so many ballasts, it took about a year to finish the conversions, Plutz says.
Replacing Chillers in Hot, Humid Climate
Chiller Upgrades: Drives, Cooling Towers and Air-Handling Units
Chiller Rebuild Improves IAQ, Relative Humidity
Hotel Retrofits Lighting, Plumbing Systems
