Fan-coil units help achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating
Contributing to the achievement of a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating for the Paragon office building in Bristol is air conditioning based on Matrix fan-coil units from Ability Projects. These units incorporate energy-efficient EC/DC motors to provide infinitely variable speed control of the entire unit, as well as each fan. Each air duct can thus be balanced for air volume through duct speed alone, eliminating the need for noisy volume-control dampers and their time-consuming installation.
These FCUs can also adjust air volume according to room occupancy or thermal demand — or a combination of the two.
The 6-storey Paragon building offers some 7000 m2 of grade A office accommodation and ancillary retail space. Air conditioning is supplied to the office floors by 94 concealed 4-pipe ceiling cassettes with nominal heating/cooling capacities of 5 kW and operating at NR34 noise rating at 30 Pa resistance.
The Matrix system is fitted with a BACnet open-protocol intelligent controller, factory prewired to the FCU and complete with dedicated software. This specially developed controller operates the modulating valve and senses the temperature onto the coil. It also offers wireless access from a laptop computer without having to access the ceiling void.
