Controls strategy grows itself at horticultural education centre
An innovative learning centre at the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Harlow Carr has benefited from a rapid, accurate and reliable approach to controls engineering with the assistance of Tridium’s Vykon HVAC software for creating control applications within a standard Tridium JACE controller. The 2-storey £3.3 million Bramall Learning Centre will provide free educational facilities for over 10 000 children a year. It is also home to the new Blundell Library, the principal horticultural library for the north of England.
Linear Controls, a specialist HVAC systems integrator, was responsible for the design, installation and commissioning of a fully integrated building-management system for the project and was involved from the early design phase of the project.
Vykon HVAC incorporates an easy-to-use library of standard, proven HVAC applications. A wizard-style interface shielded Linear Controls from the complexities of much of the detailed configuration set-up, reducing the risk of data-entry errors. Programming of control strategies, alarms, histories, graphics and navigation trees were all configured automatically. Equipment includes a ground-source heat pump, natural ventilation, CO2 and temperature monitoring, weather monitoring stations, utility metering monitoring, solar system temperature monitoring, underfloor-heating manifolds, DHW systems and rainwater harvesting.
Automated engineering enables the rapid creation of systems that will work first time around, eliminating the time-consuming and costly need for data to be re-entered, perhaps several times, and reducing the likelihood of reworks and callbacks.
