Services > Hydronic/Water Testing & Balancing

Hydronic/water testing and balancing ensures that building systems operate at design conditions. Design engineers design specific water flows for each pump, coil or boiler. Our clients hire us to perform water test and balance on their systems.

Pumps are the basic mechanical device to provide water flows to the building. We measure total flow and adjust pump speed or triple duty valve resistance to meet design requirements. We also deadhead the pump to determine the impeller size. We measure and record final conditions including gpms, pressure drop, operating volts and amps.

In air systems, designers often utilize reheat coils to provide heating to spaces. This allows a control valve in the water system to open and close based on space temperature. The air passes across the reheat coil with hot water and increases the temperature of the air. Balance valves are incorporated into the reheat system to provide a specified design flow at particular conditions. Commonly this condition is at max pump flow with all control valves open. Systems that are not balanced will typically have more flow at reheats closest to the pump and lower airflows farther from the pump. In this case, control valves close to the pump will often stroke more frequently and may have trouble controlling at mostly closed positions. By adjusting the valve or adding resistance to the flow paths nearest the source, we are able to direct the flow to meet design water flows at each device within a reasonable tolerance (usually +/-10%).

Fan coil units use hot and chilled water to provide individual space airflow at the proper temperatures. These units typically have a small outside air duct or outside air ducted to the space to provide ventilation airflow, and using a fan across coils to recirculate the room airflow. These fan coil units are similar to reheat coils as they have control valves and balance valves installed. We balance these in similar fashion to the reheat coils.

We also perform this water balancing for air handling unit coils both hot water coils and chilled water coils. It should be noted that chilled water is a more critical application than hot water, as varying from design gpms in chilled water will more greatly affect coil performance.

We also perform water balancing on more specialized systems like chillers, cooling towers, boilers, and domestic hot water recirculating systems.