CLISSOLD DISTRICT HEATING & BUILDING CONNECTIONS

HACKNEY BOROUGH COUNCIL

BACKGROUND

Hackney Borough Council are creating a series of Heat Networks across their region, predominantly based on open and closed loop Ground Source Heat Pump applications.

One of these projects is centred around the Leisure Centre in Clissold, London, where the construction of a series of both Abstraction and Injection Bore Holes are planned to access energy from a chalk aquifer 250m from the surface.

An interconnecting heat network to a number of other buildings in the vicinity, including a Secondary School, is also to be developed with the ultimate goal to switch these buildings to a low carbon form of heat supply.

With the aim of contributing towards the Councils plans to achieve net zero by 2040, it is hoped the scheme will also provide a local catalyst for wider low and zero carbon projects.

OUR ROLE

D3A was appointed by the Heat Pump Designer to provide both buried heat network design and technical support to the heat pump application. In addition, we were also contracted to provide design support for the various building connections, of which the Leisure Centre was particularly complex.

For this specific building connection there was a subterranean plant room that sat behind a stairwell and other structures making the pipe route very complex to navigate. The distance, once inside the building, was also challenging with a need to navigate other obstacles and precisely target a narrow, below ground service corridor. To complicate matters further the road at the entry point was congested with utilities.

Our role as design lead involved coordinating with the building owner, structural engineers and other stakeholders, to provide a robust design that not only ensured effective connectivity of the network to the plant room but also ensured that building integrity was not compromised.

OUTCOME

D3A has a considerable amount of experience and expertise within the District Heating sector, including in the design of buried networks, and building connections. For this project, we worked as part of a wider stakeholder team to support a highly compressed programme and to ensure delivery of both the buried network and building connection designs. We were mindful that the adopted solutions should minimise disruption to each building during the construction phase and support a seamless transition from the existing fossil fuel heat source to a Ground Source Heat Pump system.

With this project we faced some additional challenges as installers had already been appointed, plus a commitment to ‘heat on agreements’ had previously been made with various building owners. Despite this, the D3A team were able to support the install programme, manage the challenges and complete work ahead of programme. The building connectivity design was also successfully delivered to programme, supporting timely plant connections.