Ssssssmokin’
According to Crispe, on sunny summer days when races are typically held, the black, rubber-coated, concrete starting pad absorbs incredible heat, with surface temperatures as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat softens the rubber left on the track by previous competitors to the point where it becomes greasy, causing vehicles to lose traction at the beginning of a race. This dramatically affects vehicle performance and race speeds. 
   “Many people are familiar with the clouds of smoke that billow out behind dragsters as they do burnouts to prep the tires and starting line surface,” Crispe said. “But tire smoke during the race is an indication of lost traction, something that we feel can be prevented. With a track cooling system in place, we get a healthier track and improved race times overall.”
   The theory was confirmed at the first event in 2008 when the system was given a test run during an event. The idea was to circulate only un-chilled groundwater at ambient temperatures to see how it would affect timing. With track temperatures some 18 degrees cooler in the cooled versus the uncooled parts of the track, the theory was proven.

We obliterated track records and expectations,” said Bandimere’s media relations director Jeff Sipes. On the very first race of the evening, a track record that stood for more than eight years was smashed by more than 1/10 of a second—a near-eternity in the drag racing business.
   Further bolstering the theory behind having a chilled track, Bandimere track managers were quick to notice that track temperatures, and competitors’ times, increased steadily once the underground water was subjected to high temperatures by being circulated through the heated slab. The next step was to put some chill into the water.
   “We were gunning for a hard and fast deadline, Crispe said, saying a large national event was set to roll into the facility just one month after the initial test: “We knew we had to finish the cooling system for that event,” he said “The cooler track temperatures proved their value in our opinion, so we installed a cooling tower with a water chiller,” Crispe said. “That equipment allows us to reduce water temperatures between 20- and 30 degrees during the evening hours.” 
   Another challenge to be overcome at Bandimere was the inconsistency caused by solar gain on the track. System design engineer Brandon Thompson, PE, president of Littleton, Colo.-based Thompson Engineering, said the purpose of the system’s design—in addition to cooling the starting lanes of the race track—was to even-out the temperatures for both lanes.
   “Bandimere is built next to a hill and, as the sun went down, the west lane was shaded sooner than the east lane, so it cooled faster,” Thompson said. “The high temperature of the slab was creating slippage between the tires and the track surface, which was especially bad on the east lane.”
   Thompson worked closely with Him Ly, commercial sales engineer for Apple Valley, Minn.-based Uponor in the design of the system. According to Thompson, initial design calculations determined that track temperatures could be lowered by 20 F. It was a very nice surprise to learn that an 18-degree difference was achieved without a chiller and cooling tower, so they knew it would be possible to improve track temperatures even more dramatically by circulating chilled water. The cooling system circulates 110 gallons per minute, removing just over one million BTUs of heat per hour. 
   According to Rick Meek, vice president of TM Sales, a manufacturer’s rep firm based in Denver, the “heart” of the cooling system is a pair of in-line, vertical, multi-stage Grundfos CR pumps.
   “The pumps chosen for the job are ideal because they’re stainless steel, and have multiple impellers for high head and accommodate low suction inlet pressure,” Meek said. Miles of PEX
Several months before actual work on the track began, Crispe called Uponor to ask about a capable installer and that search quickly led to Tony Vecchiarelli, owner of Arvada, Colo.-based Tony V Plumbing & Heating, a full-service plumbing and mechanical contractor with seven installers. 
   “We were thrilled to be involved in a radiant cooling project this substantial,” Vecchiarelli said. “We helped with the layout of the system and fabrication and setting of the manifolds.
   Vecchiarelli said there are two large manifold vaults; one between the lanes and another behind one of the grandstands. The Tony V Plumbing crew, “valved the manifold sets to ease [air] purging,” he said. “With 24,000 gallons of water to circulate, that’s a pretty important capability.” 
   The work crew labored through cold weather to get the tubing down. Each lane has its own insulated 12,000-gallon storage tank, both of which are buried outside the guard walls to the east side of the track. Just three inches below the surface lies 15,000 lineal feet of 3/4-inch Uponor AQUAPEX tubing—nearly three miles—in thirty 500-foot loops, with tubing spaced on 6-inch centers. 
   Non-barrier AQUAPEX was specified because the cooling tower will introduce new oxygen into the water continuously making it, in essence, an open system. Oxygen will enter the system while having no negative effect. 
   “Another bullet we missed was one we can thank Mother Nature for,” said Aaron Smith, Uponor’s director of commercial sales. “Typically, one of the first system design questions to deal with when building a radiant cooling system is the challenge of condensation. When liquid temperatures fall below dewpoint, condensation develops. In Colorado, however, low humidity permits low system temperatures with outdoor reset control that tracks dewpoint and temperature, enabling the Bandimere system to ‘coast’ just above the point where condensation could occur.” 
   Smith added the issue of dewpoint, even in areas of the country where humidity is higher, can be dealt with in most instances. “This is one of the more challenging, and fascinating, facets of radiant system design,” he said. “For commercial systems, radiant cooling—with intelligent design—can be accomplished in almost any instance today.”

Ecstatic Racers
It seems the entire racing industry has taken note of the work under way at Bandimere. And word moves quickly among the players in this industry when an enhancement comes along that could affect racing clock times. 
   “Crew chiefs nationwide are looking at this as an important variable,” added Sipes. “There’s a lot of very positive buzz in the industry about this as racing professionals look at it closely.” 
   The drivers, too, were, “amazed” at the difference the chilled surface made in their cars’ performance. Greg Anderson, an NHRA Pro Stock racer who triumphed on the new, all-concrete surface during the 29th Annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals, bragged in the post qualifying press conference about the Bandimere racing surface. His opinion didn’t change in the post-race.
   “I can’t say enough about what the Bandimere family has done for this race track,” Anderson said, noting he had always wondered what [the auto racing industry] could do to improve the heat factor on the tracks: “These guys have figured it out,” Anderson said. “The Bandimere family and Larry Crispe did a great job with the concrete surface. The cooling system under the track is definitely the wave of the future. It’s absolutely a ‘supertrack’.” 
   “It’s been a massive overhaul,” said Crispe. “But, hey, with the work complete now at 50 years of age, you could say the track’s through its middle-age crisis. Now we’re ready for the next fifty years.”