Modern controls respect Scottish historic building
Rosslyn Chapel, a Category A listed building and scheduled ancient monument in Scotland, now has a building-management system supplied by Priva and engineered and installed by Campbell Control Services without any alterations to the historic fabric. The chapel is about seven miles south of Edinburgh, and the installation of the BMS was part of a wider refurbishment that included the installation of biomass heating.
Mark Napier, technical director with consulting engineers Harley Haddow which designed the environmental and associated engineering systems, explains, ‘In total, the project embraced the full conservation and restoration of the chapel and included a new visitor centre and the establishment of a centralised heating biomass plant.’
For an historic building such as the Rosslyn Chapel, too much heat and humidity can have a negative effect on historic features and artefacts — conditions that are controlled by Priva BMS technology.
Mark Napier explains, ‘The energy-efficient refurbishment of the chapel presented a particular set of challenges. One of the main aims was to keep the environment within the buildings at defined temperature and humidity parameters in a manner sympathetic to its historic aspect. This has been achieved using four RF sensors that measure temperature and humidity without the need to using wiring and trunking, which would have potentially caused damage to the fabric of the building.The chapel’s control panel includes a Priva Compri HX4 base module and a Priva Compri HX touchscreen with the Modbus protocol via a wireless controller to communicate with the wireless sensors.
A similar configuration is employed for the visitor-centre control panel, which uses an HX6E controller linked to a front-end PC loaded with Priva’s TC History software for long-term datalogging. This panel can display energy savings and carbon reduction on a 25 cm display in the visitor centre.
Another Priva panel controls the biomass plant using a Compri HX4 base module. The biomass plant uses wood chips or process chips.
The Priva system also monitors outdoor conditions and activates fans when there is an advantage to using external temperature/humidity.
