Project Brief

Howard Houses is a New York City Housing Authority campus in Brownsville, Brooklyn, completed in 1955, with ten buildings of seven and thirteen stories and 815 apartments. The campus is part of NYCHA's Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program, which pairs rehabilitation with long-term affordability. KeRi was the MEP, fire protection and fire alarm consultant on the architectural team defining the scope of that rehabilitation.

KeRi surveyed the central boiler plant, the tank rooms in each building, sample apartments and the roofs. Heat comes from four 250 BHP low-pressure steam boilers, about 34 years old, feeding underground steam mains to all ten buildings, where original convectors have no apartment temperature control. Each building has its own 1,200 A service and instantaneous steam-to-hot-water heaters, there is no central cooling, and the buildings have no fire alarm system. KeRi's report and presentation to NYCHA found the boiler plant, electrical, plumbing and elevator systems at the end of their useful life.

KeRi then carried those findings into the MEP sections of the campus Basis of Design through NYCHA review: wall-mounted heat pumps with energy recovery ventilation in apartments, central heat pump domestic hot water in the tank rooms, all-electric kitchens with the electrical upgrades to support them, a new fire alarm system and a standby generator for the community center, along with utility load letters and a 2025 energy code analysis.

MEP Engineering Scope

What We Engineered

MEP assessment and rehabilitation scope for the PACT campus:

• Existing conditions survey of the central steam plant, tank rooms, apartments and roofs
• MEP condition assessment report and presentation to NYCHA
• Energy conservation measure input for heating, hot water, ventilation and cooking
• MEP, fire protection and fire alarm sections of the campus Basis of Design
• Heat pump heating and cooling, heat pump hot water and all-electric kitchen strategy
• Utility load letters and 2025 NYC energy code analysis

The Challenge

An aging steam campus with no cooling and no fire alarm needed a rehabilitation scope that met NYCHA's decarbonization goals and could be priced before a development partner was selected.

Our Solution

KeRi documented every major system in the field and turned the findings into a Basis of Design for electrified heating, cooling and hot water, with the electrical and life safety upgrades to match.