Room 155: Disease Research Room

Unlike every other room in this facility this room is designed as a flow-through system. This is due to the nature of fish disease research. The room has several design features that make it unique from the other rooms.

Animal Holding Room:

Room: The walls are epoxy coated concrete block and the floor is a specially hardened concrete to prevent water penetration. There is a grate covered trench located along the center of the room. The trench drains into a large underground sump pit that is covered with several FRP panels.

Located on the north wall of the room is a hands free sink. There is also a footbath integrated into the floor in front of the door. A removable stainless steel rail is mounted into the floor between the footbath and the room. Upon entering the animal holding potion of the room you must walk through the footbath to the hands-free sink to wash your hands. Both the drains for the sink and the footbath are connected to the sump pit.

Located on the south wall is a cold water/steam unit for cleaning tanks.

Sump: located along the east wall and below the floor is a sump pit

Aeration: Low pressure air for tank aeration is supplied through black ABS pipe that circles the room. Air is supplied from three 1hp Gast regenerative air blowers located in room 174.

Power: This room has five 115V, two 220 V and one 250V 3 phase electrical circuits. Of the 115 V circuits one receptacle of two circuits is controlled by the Argus™ system. Each receptacle is ground fault protected. If power is lost to a receptacle, check the buttons located in the middle. If one is sticking out, press it back in to reset the power. If power is lost again, report it to Aqualab personnel. A circuit breaker panel is located on the wall in the room. Please do not open this panel without proper authorization.

Lights: Lighting in this room is provided by weatherproof incandescent fixtures. This room has a fully programmable photoperiod (i.e., the photoperiod can be programmed to emulate that found at any latitude in the world or any artificial photoperiod that the researcher requires). At “dawn” the incandescent bulbs slowly ramp up in intensity, and at “dusk” they slowly dim. The time required to ramp to full intensity and the final intensity of the lights is programmable. The Photoperiod Alarm is set to activate if the lights do not turn on or off as the program requires. The lights can be turned on manually from the Argus™ panel located in the hall. An alarm situation will occur if the lights are left on manual for too long.

Ventilation: This room has a separate ventilation system to the rest of the facility. Recirculated air is supplied to the room from the building HVAC system, however the room

is supplied with its own exhaust fan. This creates a negative pressure within the room causing air to be drawn in. The negative pressure prevents possibly contaminated air from leaving the confines of the room.

Anteroom:

Water Supply: This room is supplied with well water fed directly from Aqualab’s pre-filtration system. Flow into the room is monitored by a paddlewheel flow sensor. When this sensor stops it initiates a control sequence that causes the domestic water backup supply line to open. The domestic water supply passes through a carbon filter to remove contaminants (chlorine and copper) from the water before it enters the tanks in the room. When well water flow is restored it initiates a control sequence to return water flow to the well water supply to the fish tanks. Domestic water supply will be an alarm condition.

UV Sterilization: This room is supplied with a one bulb Trojan Aqualogic UV sterilizer located on the north wall in the anteroom.

Water Temperature Control: Water temperature is controlled and monitored by the Argus™ system and consists of two plate heat exchangers supplied with hot and cold glycol. Water temperature is monitored going in and out of the exchangers by thermistors located in the pipes. These thermistors are set to activate an alarm (Water Temperature Deviation Alarm) if the water temperature deviates from the target temperature by a preset margin.

The computer control system regulates the position of two two-position three-way actuated valves to provide either hot or cold glycol. Actuated modulating valves regulate the amount of glycol supplied to each heat exchanger to maintain the target water temperatures. The range of water temperatures in this room is approximately 8°C - 25°C.