Plaza Apartments

San Francisco, California

The Plaza Apartments project is a nine story building housing 114 low income residential units with a community room, theater, laundry facilities, along with staff offices on the second floor and retail spaces at the ground floor.

The project utilizes a hydronic heating hot water system with high efficient boiler and a variable frequency drive pumping system. The efficient boiler also provides domestic water for the building, by using a large storage tank with an internal heat exchanger to generate domestic hot water. The theater space is served by a water cooled air conditioning system coupled to a rooftop cooling tower. The rooftop also accommodates a 28 kW photovoltaic system which generates clean renewable power for the facility. This project was built to the standards of the Green Communities criteria and became the first affordable housing development with a LEED Silver certification for both the city and county of San Francisco.

CB Engineers provided full mechanical and plumbing design and during construction, provided electrical systems site overview and checkout. CB Engineers also provided the building commissioning for the MEP systems and performed the documentation required for the LEED Silver rating.