Rehau underground system delivers tempered fresh air for new visitor centre
Among a range of low-carbon features in the Ray Park visitors centre in the London Borough of Redbridge is a ventilation system using pipework buried in the ground to provide pre-cooled and pre-warmed ventilation air. The system is based on Rehau’s Awadukt Thermo ground-to-air heat-exchanger system.
150 m of polypropylene has been laid in a 30 m-long grid 1.5 m down. External air is drawn through a tamperproof inlet and then warmed or cooled before it is delivered into the building through displacement floor grilles at 2700 m3/h.
At this depth, the ground temperature is a fairly constant 8 to 12 °C. Low-carbon consultancy XCO2 Energy specified the Rehau system.The company had designed similar systems before using concrete pipework, but the optimised and integral silver anti-microbial layers in the Rehau system offer a simpler, off-the-shelf solution. The practice is to monitor its performance to evaluate its effect on reducing mechanical cooling in summer and heating in winter.
Other features of the centre include a biomass boiler system, evacuated-tube solar thermal and warm-cell insulation in the wall construction.
