A project I led at XCO2 is being featured in the Ecotech supplement in Architecture Today this month (no link yet). It’s a visitors centre for the National Trust in the Chiltern Downs expected to provide services to around 400,000 visitors a year. And it’s loaded with green goodness: woodchip boiler for space and water heating, rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing, and an earth coupled ventilation system that brings air into the building through a 90m long concrete pipe buried below ground.
Buried 2m below ground, this pipe prewarms incoming air in winter and cools incoming air in summer. We’re remotely monitoring the BMS and in the recent heatwave we were getting around 8kW of cooling out of the pipe, which is even better than the initial modelling predicted.
The wind catcher at the intake end is interesting as well (pictured). We put backflow dampers (like a one-way valve for ventilation ducts) on all four sides but turned them backwards, so they only let air in. The louvres open on the windward side but snap shut in all other directions, forcing air down into the earth pipe. Check out the article this month for more detail.
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