A top-ranked university serving thousands of students knew the importance of sourcing high-quality solutions for their infrastructure challenges. That's why Rutgers University, ranked 15th among public universities nationwide, chose to work with KEES, a manufacturer known for its top-of-the-line HVAC solutions.

Rutgers university, New Jersey's flagship public university, serves over 69,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Rutgers is committed to providing students and faculty with state-of-the-art facilities for learning, discovery, and innovation. To improve facility performance and efficiency, they partner with KEES, who shares their commitment to high-caliber work.

Project Requirements

As part of a broader campus-wide infrastructure improvement plan, KEES partnered with Rutgers to manufacture a replacement for their aging 80-foot long louvered penthouse in the Sonny Werblin Recreation Center.

Facilities like Sonny Werblin – which include Olympic-size pools, courts, and fitness spaces – rely on large-scale HVAC systems to manage internal climate and humidity. Louvered penthouses cycle in fresh air and remove exhaust air through the louvered walls.

To service the needs of a highly trafficked recreation space, the penthouse required three internal continuous plenum separation baffles, four walk-through doors, and a galvanized steel bird screen. Additionally, as Sonny Werblin operates 24/7, the penthouse needed to be replaced as quickly as possible to reduce facility downtime.

Why KEES

It's a challenge to find a manufacturer for such uniquely sized equipment, something the well-known engineering firm for this project, Mott MacDonald, is familiar with. At KEES, custom is our standard. We are uniquely positioned to manufacture a louvered penthouse of this size and caliber.

For this project, we designed a one-of-a-kind penthouse with a 1052" x 84" throat and 72" louver height. It perfectly slotted into the Sonny Werblin Recreation Center's existing infrastructure, minimizing installation time and expense and keeping the facility up and running. According to Mott MacDonald, their experience working with KEES was easy and straight-forward.

Like this project with Rutgers and others, KEES's capacity for custom work is why our customers call on us for unique HVAC solutions. Our flexible production environment allows KEES to craft one-of-a-kind, quality equipment to match our customer's needs.