LJJ Building Services Contractors is overseeing the high-end M&E for Shepherd Construction on the £50m Spring Mews accommodation scheme in Vauxhall.
Demand for student accommodation in the UK is booming. There are plans to remove all limits on higher education numbers, which could mean that an extra 60,000 student places will be available at universities by 2015/16.
New student accommodation blocks are being developed up and down the country to meet the demand.
The £50m Spring Mews is one such scheme, located in the heart of the Vauxhall Gardens Conservation Area south of the Thames.
It is being delivered by Shepherd Construction, with LJJ Building Services Contractors providing £14m design and build M&E services.
A mixed-use development from CLS Holdings, Spring Mews comprises student accommodation with 378 beds, a 93-bed hotel and flexible office/retail units.
Facilities for the students include fully air-conditioned, en-suite rooms, kitchen facilities, a gym, swimming pool, cinema and laundry facilities.
The 93-bed Staybridge Suite hotel from the IHG Group will provide rooms designed for residents with longer-stay requirements. This too has a private gym and laundry facilities.
High-end Swedish energy
At the heart of the M&E installation is an energy centre devised by Swedish energy management consultant EGMA Systems. The energy centre is a high-performing geothermal heat pump system, producing heating, cooling and domestic hot water.
This system is able to produce heating and cooling simultaneously, which gives great advantages, since the waste heat from the cooling equipment is used to supply the heating system and DHW.
The centre uses an aquifer as an energy source, supplying three energy machines with high-grade heat from the ground.
More than 80 per cent of the system’s energy demand is provided by renewable geothermal energy.
The system also uses waste heat produced by the building in the summertime by storing that heat in the ground until it is needed in the winter.
By using the ground as a heat sink, the efficiency for producing cooling in the summertime also increases sharply.
EGMA Systems has carried out the design of the energy centre as well as selecting the energy machines.
Client CLS Holdings is focused on environmental issues and energy savings, and the energy centre will play a crucial part in developing this aspect of the company’s vision.
M&E from top to bottom
As well as the energy machines and associated pump sets and shunt groups, the basement plant room contains the scheme’s boilers, thermal stores, calorifiers and plate heat exchangers.
Dry air cooling plant is provided at roof level for the dissipation of any unused energy. Also at roof level is a CHP unit that will maintain the required temperature in the thermal stores.
One benefit on the scheme is that there is no condensate pipework required at all. This is made possible by running the chilled water flow and return temperatures at 14 deg C flow and 17 deg C return.
At these temperatures, the coils remain dry in all conditions. On the downside, coils need to be larger to achieve the necessary duty and acoustic performance, which can be an issue when space is tight.
As well as the ground-source heat pump system and CHP, the scheme’s renewable energy requirements are met by photovoltaic panels on the roofs of both the student accommodation and the hotel.
Toilet time savings
A major time-saving on the installation programme was achieved by using prefabricated bathroom pods in both the student accommodation and hotel.
LJJ estimates that eight to 10 weeks has been saved by avoiding first and second-fix work on the sanitary ware across 471 rooms.
Pods are lifted in as complete units and all that is required are connections to water and electrical supplies.
LJJ also set up an on-site prefabrication process, with a series of welding bays used to prefabricate elements on site before installation.
There is a lot of repetition involved in a project of this type, with floors being largely similar, so the scheme lent itself to such an approach.
In central London, LJJ finds this can work more efficiently than prefabrication offsite because of the limitations of timed delivery slots with the offsite approach.
Philip Eykel is operations director at LJJ Building Services Contractors
Source: Construction News
