Breathing Buildings, a leading provider of controlled natural and hybrid ventilation systems, welcomed the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement of a £60 million fund for publicly owned leisure centres with swimming pools.
Breathing Buildings
The funding is being made available to help centres facing cost pressures, including operational and maintenance costs, and energy bills. Improved energy efficiency is a key aim of the funding. The new funding makes it the ideal time for leisure facilities to invest in energy efficient ventilation that also enables centres to benefit from their heat gains, such as Breathing Buildings’ NVHR 1700, thus helping cut future heating bills.
The new funding, managed by Sport England, aims to offer financial help to leisure centres with pools through a one-year fund. Local authorities can apply for funding for leisure centres that face immediate cost pressures. £40 million of the fund will be for investment in decarbonisation and long-term energy efficiency, while £20 million will help with costs to make centres more energy efficient.
Breathing Buildings’ NVHR® 1700, provides effective and energy efficient ventilation and thermal comfort and is the ideal ventilation solution for leisure centres and other buildings with high heat gains. The NVHR® 1700 offers enhanced natural ventilation and hybrid technology in a slimline, compact, lightweight and energy efficient unit that’s designed to fulfil the ventilation needs for leisure centres and other larger buildings, with best-in-class flowrate, noise levels and energy consumption. The NVHR® 1700 leads the way in efficiency with specific fan power levels as low as 0.08 W/l/s and in larger applications provides airflow rates as high as 540l/s.
“We’re delighted that this new funding recognises the importance of improving the energy efficiency of leisure centres to lower carbon emissions and to cut bills. With centres able to apply for funding to invest in technologies to facilitate this, now is the ideal time for leisure facilities to improve their ventilation,” said Louise McHugh, Product Manager at Breathing Buildings. “The NVHR® 1700 is the answer – making use of leisure centre’s free heat gains to provide superb air quality and excellent thermal comfort. NVHR® provides ultra-low energy natural ventilation with hybrid technology, offering energy savings and so reducing operating costs.”
Breathing Building’s NVHR® 1700 is the newest addition to the company’s multi-award-winning NVHR® range. Not only has the NVHR® range won the Energy Efficient Product of the Year Award at the prestigious Energy Awards, but it also recently won three awards for providing ventilation to the East Anglian Air Ambulance project that utilised Breathing Building’s NVHR® range.
The NVHR® hybrid ventilation system’s ultra-efficient facade-based mixing ventilation allows single-sided, enhanced natural and hybrid ventilation in deep plan spaces whilst making the most of internal heat gains, which are particularly high in leisure centres, to deliver superb thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Allowing low-energy natural ventilation with hybrid technology, even in buildings with limited facade and roof space, highly efficient mixing fans mitigate cold draughts in winter and provide a ventilation boost in summer.
Hybrid ventilation focuses on the vital balance of indoor air quality, thermal comfort, and efficiency by choosing the most appropriate mode of ventilation based on the internal and external conditions. Fitted with an external temperature sensor and an internal temperature and CO2 sensor as well as an intelligent controller, the system monitors conditions to create an ideal indoor environment, automatically switching between natural, hybrid and mechanical ventilation, maximising benefits and allowing the NVHR to be in the most energy efficiency mode possible at all stages, thus making it an ideal choice to meet the funding criteria.
NVHR® optimises indoor air quality, comfort and efficiency by automatically switching between natural, hybrid and mechanical ventilation, maximising benefits. The unit has three modes: Natural Mode, Summer Boost and Winter Mixing. The mid-season Natural Mode enables the unit to maximise the benefits of passive ventilation by opening the damper and ventilating with zero cost. The Summer Boost function enables the hybrid technology to maximise ventilation and cooler air. In winter the heat recycling strategy offers huge heating-bill savings while providing ventilation to ensure excellent indoor air quality and thermal comfort, essential for leisure centres with increasing energy costs.
Featuring easy-to-use controls with manual override NVHR® allows buildings without a Building Management Systems (BMS) to benefit from the technology while also offering full BMS integration. Furthermore, the NVHR® 1700 has ultra-easy app-based commissioning for a faster, safer, and more accurate install. NVHR® offers flexible installation with different options available depending on the application. When no ceiling void is available the unit can be installed as an exposed unit. NVHR® can also be installed as a ducted unit within the ceiling void. In addition, it is possible to install NVHR® in a bulkhead arrangement.
Designed to meet thermal comfort and air quality criteria of: BB101 (2018); PSBP FOS; ESFA Annex 2F and CIBSE TM52. The Breathing Buildings NVHR® also offers quiet operation and is fully compliant for classrooms, science laboratories and offices. In addition, the NVHR® is ErP compliant and CE certified.
For further information on NVHR® and E-stack ventilation, as well as other products and services offered by Breathing Buildings, visit the website below.
