Data Center Construction in Wylie, Texas

Heat rejection takes land and water, and Wylie offers a good deal of both. We plan cooling plants here by asking three questions in order: how much heat must the building reject at full load, how will that heat leave the site, and what water and power does the method require. The answers fix the size of the chiller plant, the tower or dry cooler field, the water storage and the pad area, and they determine how the rest of the site is arranged.

The city sits between Lavon Lake and Lake Ray Hubbard, with the Lavon dam and reservoir about five miles to the north. Two large bodies of water do not guarantee a cooling supply, since any water used by a facility must come through a utility or authority with its own capacity and rules, but they do shape drainage, flood questions and the larger regional water conversation. We open that conversation early with the water provider, using a written demand estimate and a plan for treatment, blowdown and reuse.

The land around Wylie is also being developed for freight and manufacturing, which supplies skilled trades and sites with highway and rail access. Beside the intermodal terminal, a logistics park on 220 acres was unveiled in January 2021, with capacity for 2.4 million square feet of buildings and direct access to Highway 78. The terminal itself started operating in 2015, and after its 2018 expansion it holds 19,000 feet of track and can handle 342,000 lifts yearly. Heavy mechanical equipment benefits from that kind of access.

Large distribution buildings dominate the area's newer development. One rear-load building along State Highway 78 offers 274,416 square feet, a clear height of 36 feet and 55 dock-high doors on a reinforced slab 7 inches thick, and the developer announced the start of construction in April 2023. A building of this type can be converted to computing space, but a conversion changes everything about cooling: the roof loads, the yard space, the pipe routes and the slab loads must be checked.

We evaluate such conversions for owners who want speed, and compare them with new construction on an adjoining parcel. The cooling plant is often the deciding factor because a former warehouse may offer plenty of floor and very little yard.

A chilled-water plant is typically the largest mechanical expense. Chillers, towers, pumps, piping, controls, water treatment and storage tanks make up the equipment bill, while foundations, screen walls, sound attenuation and drainage make up the site bill. Higher redundancy adds capital and space.

We present options side by side: water-cooled, air-cooled and hybrid. Each has a different mix of capital cost, operating cost, water use and electrical load, and the owner's priorities decide which option is best. Cooling choices also interact with the chiller and cooling plant pads we design.

Sites near lakes and creek basins need careful drainage design, including detention and outfalls that satisfy the city. Soils in this part of North Texas are clay-rich and move with moisture, so we design pad foundations and pipe supports accordingly and plan for differential settlement between the building and the yard.

Cooling towers produce plumes and noise, and generators add their own. We position equipment away from homes, specify low-sound units where needed and design our stormwater and detention system to keep clean runoff off adjoining property.

Some facilities are mostly plant. A modular data center arrives with power and cooling built in but still requires a pad, chilled-water or air-cooled equipment and utility connections. A battery energy storage yard needs its own cooling and fire protection.

A traditional hall relies on a plant on the ground or roof, sized to its load and its future growth, and we draw the plant to allow additional chillers to be added without rework.

The Wylie economic development office names supply chain, logistics and warehousing, precision manufacturing, and window and door manufacturing as its leading sectors, and operators in those fields increasingly run automation and analytics close to their plants. Larger compute users, including hyperscale cloud providers, bring much heavier cooling loads.

We tailor the plant to each: a small chilled-water system for an industrial owner's control room, a medium plant for a regional enterprise hall, or a campus-scale loop for a large operator.

The city sits near U.S. 75 and Interstate 30. Trade partners and suppliers reach it from the north Texas region, and many of our projects here connect with work in Allen, Garland and Plano.

A college campus that opened in August 2020 and can serve up to 7,500 students at full capacity adds a source of technical training in the area, which helps with skilled-trade recruitment for the long term.

We design for testing. Each chiller needs valves that allow isolation, each loop needs places to measure flow and temperature, and each pump needs a way to run in a test mode. Commissioning scripts are drafted while the design is still on paper so the plant can be proven under load before the owner takes over.

At turnover the facility staff receives the data from every test, a trained team and a maintenance plan for water treatment, tower cleaning and equipment inspection.

The work often combines cooling water supply and reuse lines and liquid cooling coordination with the plant itself. Owners may add generator yards, battery rooms and security features as the project grows.

We offer each as part of a single schedule or as a separate package, and keep one point of contact responsible for sequence and quality.

Send the load, the redundancy level and any water information you have. We will return a plant concept, a pad layout and a budget range for each cooling option.

Does having two lakes nearby mean cooling water is easy to get?

Not automatically. Water for a facility comes from a utility or water authority, and capacity, price and rules vary. We request a written availability statement and design for the flow the utility can commit.

Can an old warehouse be converted into a data hall?

Often, with checks. The slab must carry heavier loads, the roof must support equipment, and there must be yard space for cooling and generators. We study each building before the owner commits.

What is the difference between water-cooled and air-cooled plants?

Water-cooled plants use evaporation and need makeup water, treatment and blowdown, and they use less electricity. Air-cooled plants use no evaporative water but more electricity and more space. A hybrid design mixes the two.

How do you protect cooling pads from clay soil movement?

We follow the geotechnical engineer's recommendations, which may include drilled piers, thicker slabs, moisture control and flexible pipe connections. We also design drainage to keep water from collecting beside foundations.

What does commissioning a cooling plant prove?

That each component starts, controls respond, the loop flows at design rates, redundant paths take over when a unit fails and the plant holds temperature under load. We record the results for the owner.