Constructed in 1996, the Best Western Plus Deer Park Inn & Suites has been a staple for travelers for over 25 years. It’s located in the north-west corner of the state where nature thrives. The hotel is just a 15-minute walk from the Yampa River, one of the few free-flowing rivers in the western United States, where the river runs through the Rocky Mountains and is over 250 miles long. The hotel is also within walking distance to the locally-renowned Yampa River State Park.
The hotel’s location in Craig, Colorado is otherwise known as the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World”. As the area is known for having one of the largest elk migrations in the world, people from all over come to hunt Elk and watch this phenomenon. When they do visit, most take up lodging at the Deer Park Inn & Suites.
Rebranded to use the Best Western franchise name in 1997, the hotel has been given a three-star designation, and it features amenities such as a coffee shop, a business center, BBQ grills and outdoor picnic area, a fitness center, a spa tub, and an indoor pool. The building itself is a two-story hotel with 44 guestrooms and suites.
The pool and spa area utilized a cooling unit for 18 years before it was replaced. In an area of the country where the dew point rarely rises above 49° Fahrenheit, it would have been easier on the HVAC system to have used a dehumidification unit with a defrost function.
Then, in 2014, the owners decided to replace a failed dehumidification unit with two light commercial, heat recovery ventilators (HRVs) by Fantech.
These HRVs bring a continuous stream of fresh air to the indoors while they simultaneously remove stale air from the pool and spa area. Also, these ventilators are controlled via a dehumidistat that keeps indoor humidity levels at a minimum of 40%.
These HRVs include a defrost function in which a motorized damper temporarily blocks the incoming outdoor air stream so that the warm air from the building can circulate through the HRV. Necessary for a cold and dry region such as northwest Colorado. Then, the exhaust blower shuts down and the supply blower switches into high speed to maximize the effectiveness of the defrost strategy.
In extremely cold weather, a duct heater is also used to ensure the indoor air is tempered, but this feature keeps the HVAC system from not working as hard as it did with the past unit.Longtime maintenance technician at the hotel, Dave DeRose of Masterworks Mechanical, had this to say about the units,
“In the winter it’s not uncommon for us to see -25°F weather and it is really impressive to see the plume of condensate that is expelled by the system when it is running under those conditions. At that temperature we are relying on the duct heater a lot but it still is not the energy consumption that the old unit would have been using.”Fantech would like to thank Best Western Plus Deer Park Inn & Suites and Dave DeRose of Masterworks Mechanical for their contributions to this article.
