Breathing Buildings ventilates UK’s first zero-energy retail building
Costa’s zero-energy retail building, the first such building in the UK, incorporates a bespoke ventilation solution with a customised control system. Breathing Buildings provided design consultancy and implements for the system at the new ‘eco-pod’ at Wrekin Retail Park, Telford. The object of the project was to build the UK’s first zero-energy retail building whilst ensuring high-quality internal conditions.
Among the challenges were large areas of glass and their associated seasonal heat gains and losses, with the added element of continuous footfall and doors frequently open.
Features of the building include solar-PV on the roof, a heat pump coupled to an underfloor heating and cooling slab and the e-stack ventilation system.
Breathing Buildings’ strategy was to create intelligent and integrated communications systems and controls across ventilation, underfloor heating/cooling and air conditioning to ensure all components worked effectively together rather than against one another.
Breathing Buildings supplied three internal mixing e-stacks and three mushroom roof terminals, customised in the colours of Costa and Subway, as well as a number of low-level glazed-in dampers. The e-stack ventilation system delivers displacement ventilation in summer and mixing ventilation in winter.
The e-stack system reduces energy use by not requiring fan power and bringing in air at high level to with air in the room so it does not require pre-heating.
The control system monitors temperature and CO2 levels and reacts accordingly.
Shaun Fitzgerald, CEO of Breathing Buildings, explains, ‘The key to this project is how all the different elements use a central control system which issues signals based on the temperature and, therefore, which component is best place to maintain the interior temperature and air quality.’
