The Challenge

Parkside and Riverside are two of the primary buildings of Christchurch Hospital. Parkside dates from the 1970's and Riverside the 1990's. Both survived the Canterbury earthquakes, but in the aftermath of those earthquakes they were called upon to support many more people and activities than they had been intended to by their original designs, particularly the lower ground floor areas.

 air or cooling.The consequence on the HVAC systems was that there was a strong perception by the CDHB that some areas were not receiving sufficient fresh

Bryn Martin were asked to investigate the problems, and also to provide a condition assessment of the installed equipment and systems.

Main Features

The lower ground floor areas are characterised by a large number of spaces (several hundred) which are serviced by 100% conditioned fresh air supplies, extracts, or both. Several areas, particularly in the older Riverside block has been redeveloped and repurposed over the years, although they still rely for the most part on the original fresh air supplies and extracts.

Riverside is reasonably typical of a 1970's building, with a radiator heating system, natural ventilation to perimeter areas, and forced ventilation (supply or extract) to core or special areas.

Parkside is a more modern and complex installation, with almost all air conditioning being provided from a group of variable air volume (VAV) air conditioning systems.

The Response

The approach was to visit every space on the lower ground floor and conduct a simple audit to record the occupancy, the purpose of the space, and all of the equipment within which might liberate heat (almost all noted problems being of cooling or ventilation, rarely heating).

We then created a spreadsheet into which all of the gathered data was inserted, and the requisite fresh air and cooling requirements for each space were re-estimated, along with estimates of the

heating and cooling loads generated by people, lighting, equipment, and other activities.

The Works

The collected data, when analysed, threw up a number of areas which very clearly were under- provisioned for their function. Equally, it threw up a number of other areas which were well over provisioned. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of "grey" areas.

The condition assessment of the equipment and systems concluded that, for the age of the installed equipment, it had been maintained in good order with remarkably few problems. If there were issues surrounding the air conditioning of
individual space, they could not be attributed to poorly maintained equipment.

Apart from identifying those areas which warranted immediate attention, the report recommended a number of actions that could be taken to reduce the cooling loads, most notably as they related to lighting. Lighting was generally the largest single contributor to the heat loads.

For more Information on this or any other project or service please contact Brian Anderson or Tim Allan.