Project Brief

Red Hook West is a New York City Housing Authority campus on the Brooklyn waterfront, completed in 1955 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with fifteen buildings of three, six and fourteen stories and 1,480 apartments. Under NYCHA's Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program, KeRi was the MEP, fire protection and fire alarm consultant on the architectural team assessing the campus and shaping its rehabilitation.

KeRi surveyed the heating plant, mechanical pods, elevator machine rooms, apartments and roofs. Unlike most NYCHA campuses, Red Hook West already has new resilient heating infrastructure built after Superstorm Sandy: a central plant with three 54.4 MMBH dual-fuel boilers sends medium temperature hot water to mechanical pods, where heat exchangers make steam for each building. Inside the apartments, though, the original radiators and convectors were in poor condition with no temperature control, and the electrical, plumbing and elevator systems had reached the end of their useful life.

KeRi's recommendations keep that investment working. Window heat pumps in each apartment provide everyday heating and cooling, while new steam radiators with digital control valves, still served by the pods, carry the peak winter load and avoid oversizing the heat pumps. The plan adds automatic sprinklers and an addressable fire alarm system, new apartment wiring with submetering, LED lighting, rooftop solar, high-efficiency plumbing fixtures and machine-room-less elevators with regenerative drives.

MEP Engineering Scope

What We Engineered

MEP assessment and recommendations for the PACT campus:

• Existing conditions survey of the heating plant, mechanical pods, elevator rooms, apartments and roofs
• MEP field observation report and condition assessment presentation to NYCHA
• Hybrid heating strategy pairing apartment heat pumps with the existing steam pods
• Automatic sprinkler and addressable fire alarm recommendations
• Apartment rewiring and submetering, LED lighting and rooftop solar
• Water-saving plumbing fixtures and elevator modernization

The Challenge

A historic campus with a nearly new heating plant but worn-out apartment systems needed a modernization plan that did not throw away the resiliency investment NYCHA had just made.

Our Solution

KeRi recommended a hybrid approach, adding apartment heat pumps for daily comfort while reusing the new plant and pods for peak heat, alongside life safety, electrical and elevator upgrades.