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Brent Civic Centre - an Outstanding public building |
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13 Aug 2014, 4:12 PM
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The Brent Civic Centre in West London sits next to the iconic Wembley stadium. To match its esteemed location, the building has undergone an £85million revamp. The makeover made it the first public building in the UK to achieve a BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) Outstanding rating.
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Part of its sustainability is a result of its energy efficient underfloor heating which was installed by Giacomini UK. The company installed underfloor heating in the Basement Level Changing Room of the building. The building at the design phase is Outstanding (92.55per cent) and is on track to receive an Outstanding rating at the Post Construction Review stage.
The Civic Centre is designed to be a resource efficient building using significantly less energy than a conventional building, being some 70 per cent more energy efficient than a comparable building. This is achieved using a series of technologies that compliment each other, notably a modulating CHP engine that uses 2nd Generation Waste bio fuel to provide the cooling, heating, and power base load for over 90 per cent of the year. Not only does this enable very significant reductions in energy and carbon footprint but also is significantly cleaner by reducing NOx emissions 40mg/kwh for electricity produced by the Bio fuel CHP. Further significant improvements are gained by the use of bespoke LED lighting and highly efficient Fluorescent tubes, Integrated Air Source Heat Pump Air Handling Units, and advanced control protocols together with water efficient systems reducing pump power input by 23 per cent.
The building achieves an “A” rated Energy Performance Certificate with CO2factor of 17 significantly exceeding the minimum factor to achieve BREEAM “Outstanding” of 25. (A similar benchmark for a comparative newly built building would be a CO2 factor of 59). The building emission rate achieved is 8.5 kg CO2/m2 per annum against the notional emission rate of 45.1kg CO2/m2 per annum.
The passive design makes extensive use of natural/mixed mode ventilation, which involves using natural ventilation instead of mechanical ventilation when possible, and natural daylight. Some 10 of the 28 Occupancy Air Handling Units have been changed to Air Source Heat Pump Air Handling Units, eliminating 15 per cent of pipework and reducing pump power input by 23 per cent compared with conventional systems.
The building is equipped with a 300 Kw Combined Cooling, Heat and Power (CCHP) liquid bio fuel engine, which can run on 11 different waste fuels. The system includes a 240 Kw absorption chiller and the design has eliminated the need for thermal storage. The CCHP system is designed to handle circa 10 per cent of the buildings cooling, heating, and electrical requirements. The system will primarily run on fish oil residue, which is recognised by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets as having the lowest carbon footprint of all current bio fuels and is recognised by the Building Research Establishment as a second generation end - of - line waste that would otherwise be incinerated. The fish oil residue is sourced by an external supplier, who also maintain the system to achieve run hours of circa 90 per cent per annum.
The atrium roof is made from Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), which is a semi - opaque material that allows natural daylight into the atrium whilst avoiding excessive solar heat gain, while significantly reducing the lighting carbon and energy footprint. What electric lighting is required is supplied using energy efficient LED technology.
Whilst the New Brent Civic Centre needed to achieve a 56 per cent reduction in energy efficiency against the “notional” building to achieve BREEAM “ Outstanding”, further design development and bio fuel selection has exceeded this by improving this figure to 72 per cent with an estimated Building Emission Rate of 8.5kg CO2/m2
per annum.
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