10/06/17 – Flexibility covers all climates

People function at their best when they are comfortable, at work, when shopping and at home. But finding a comfortable temperature to suit everyone is not always easy, especially when the outside temperature can vary widely. Heating and air-conditioning systems are used around the world to help create the optimum working and living environment, but how much energy are they using?

In a temperate climate such as that in the UK, heating is most commonly used, with the air-con rarely required, however in the tropics it’s a different situation. Needless to say, whether you’re heating a building or cooling it down, each process costs and to ensure each tenant or resident receives the correct bill a reliable and approved monitoring instrument, such as Contrec’s 212 Heat Calculator, is essential.

Most large office buildings house several tenants, some even sharing the same floor. When this happens it is vital that each tenant is billed for their own energy use, and no-one else’s. By installing a system that incorporates the 212 Heat Calculator the energy consumed in hot water heating systems and chilled water cooling systems is measured accurately. This instrument meets European and International approvals for heat calculators and has accuracy to OIML R75 Class 4 (Organisation Internationale de Métrologie Légale) and EN1434.

There are 50 such systems in Riverbank House, situated on the River Thames in central London. Within the city’s financial district this multi-award winning ten-storey building provides 29,000m2 of high quality office space. RBC Wealth Management and Man Group Plc have their offices in Riverbank House.

It incorporates a number of innovative features such as sensor controlled revolving glass doors, which lead into a large double-height reception area and a multi-layered system of vibration-reducing rubber blocks to minimise disturbances between floors. Designed by David Walker Architects Riverbank House was shortlisted for a 2011 RIBA Award.

The average daily temperature in London, at the height of summer in July, is a mere 190C (670F). It drops to an average of only 70C (440F) in the winter in December, January and February. It is very different in Singapore, which has a tropical rainforest climate with very little seasonal variation. It’s always hot, it’s always humid and it rains a lot in Singapore. With daily average temperatures of around 300C (860F) dropping only as far as 230C (730F) at night heating is rarely required, however air-conditioning is essential for comfort.

There is no doubt that hospitals need to be comfortable to ensure the best outcome for patients and create the best working environment for staff. In 2012 construction started on a new 700-bed hospital located in the Western part of Singapore. The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, named after a Singaporean entrepreneur, is part of an integrated development, which also includes the construction of the 400-bed Jurong Community Hospital. It is estimated that the development will cost in the region of 635 million Singaporean Dollars (over £300 million).

These are the first hospitals in Singapore to be designed and built together from the ground up. They’ve been created as an integrated development to complement each other for better patient care, greater efficiency and convenience. They’ve been designed to ensure patient-centred services are delivered in a seamless and integrated way. They also incorporate a wide range of innovative technologies, including 300 Contrec 212 systems to calculate the energy used in the air conditioning units.

Contrec’s 212 Heat Calculator is flexible and therefore ideal for both of these very different applications. It is supplied complete with temperature probes and has the capacity to interface with a wide range of flowmeters, including positive displacement and inferential water meters, magnetic flowmeters and pulse outputs, turbine and paddle wheel flowmeters.

International boundaries are not a problem for the Contrec 212, with its multilingual capability. Data-logging and peak/off peak operations are standard. The 212 can be supplied with two precision 4-wire Pt100 RTDs (resistance temperature detectors) and has inbuilt correction for the non-linearity of the RTDs. For chilled water measurement where the temperature difference (Δt) is likely to be small, provision is made in the set-up program to zero out any offset between RTDs. It is fully programmable and all set-up data and totals are stored in a non-volatile memory for a minimum of 10 years.

Contrec’s 212 Heat Calculator is a flexible and reliable instrument that enables everyone from financiers to healthcare professionals to monitor the energy consumed in maintaining a pleasant and comfortable temperature. Whether it’s heating in London or air-conditioning in Singapore the 212 has it covered.