FLOTH’S EXPERTISE RESOLVES SPATIAL EFFICIENCY CHALLENGES OF A LARGE-SCALE PLANT

Written by Jordan Coffer – Senior Mechanical Engineer

It is not every day you are tasked with designing a 18MW plant to be installed in an existing basement where it just won’t fit. But here at Floth, no project is too big or too hard. Our highly trained team of engineers are ready and willing to take on any “impossible” job.

One of our latest projects involves building a Central Chilled Water Generating Plant which will provide chilled water to an existing build, with the provisions for additional future capacity to be incorporated.

Typically, a plantroom of this size would require a 5.5- to 6-metre-high plantroom to implement successfully and safely. However, this project involved Floth working within two basement levels with floor-to-floor heights of only 2.8 and 3 metres respectively.

Utilising the latest technology in 3D modelling and state-of-the-art point-cloud scanning, paired with our team’s vast array of design knowledge, we were able to fit a large plant into the tight space.

Our Mechanical team have a proven history of fitting large plants into existing plantrooms of any size and are willing to spend necessary time brainstorming and revising designs to find the optimal solution for the project at hand.

Our team spent three full days on site for this project, proof checking the concepts to ensure no details were missed in a live building. This enabled us to successfully design an integrated chiller plantroom with localised penetrations above each chiller with the majority of the pipework on the second level. The plantroom provides safe access to all valves through a mezzanine (top basement level) and keeps a clear access path for equipment through the bottom basement level.

We can’t wait to see this installed in the near future!

If you have a refurbishment coming up, or have a task that just seems impossible, please reach out to our dedicated team at Floth to start a conversation.