36
Building Services } iiÀ } l November/December 2020
PROJECT PROFILE
Evidence that HVRF works can be drawn aplenty from
‘THE WELL’
Sirus Group has offices in Cork and Dublin and has been providing services to the HVAC, electrical and controls industry since 1988. It has grown considerably since those early days and now employs over 120 staff specialising in the delivery of critical environments to the pharma, biotech and data centre sectors. It also provides turnkey, maintenance and FM services across a wide range of equipment and a diverse customer base including industry, education, retail, hospitality, healthcare, life sciences, airports, etc.
Environmental Design, helped shape a holistic approach to the retrofit ensuring a sustainable and low energy building would be possible, while not compromising on occupant comfort and wellbeing. The design team specified the most energy efficient and low environmental impact building technologies. A vaulted open ceiling with very innovative tripleglazed bespoke window units to direct natural light into every section of the first floor was designed to fit into an airtight insulated ceiling beneath the warehouse roof panels. The poor building fabric insulation of the 1990s made way to high-density, airtight insulation and pumped insulation up to 400mm throughout the building cavity.
The primary objective was to create a pleasant environment for staff at The Well through a combination of a stateof-the-art building management system providing clean fresh air with internal insulation ensuring optimal thermal comfort for employees. Noise levels are minimimised through acoustic design and natural materials were used to reduce volatile organic compounds in the air. Having carefully considered what indoor air quality/comfort equipment to use, the Sirus design team concluded that the Mitsubishi Electric HVRF (hybrid variable refrigerant Flow) system was the ideal solution. Four years later this decision to use a then relatively new technology as the main source of
W
hen considering the deep retrofit and renovation of an old industrial unit in Citywest approximately four years ago, Sirus set out to establish The Well, a comfortable and healthy environment for workers that would also enhance their sense of well-being. Constructed in the late 1990s, the challenge was to bring The Well to life as a state-of-the art, Class 1, smart, comfortable working environment. Expert sources, such as CIBSE Guide A:
Mitsubishi Sirus edit.indd 2
One of the office interiors at The Well.
28/10/2020 13:55
