ON SITE RECENTLY...

Some people must think that it is beautiful weather on site every day as the sun seems to shine all the time in the BLOG photos! Well, that's because we only use the bright clear ones.

Sometimes it has poured with rain for ages and then the building work has had to stop. Like just before the bio-roof volunteer week when Keir were trying to get the roof waterproof in time for the installation of the substrate. It was very wet and windy then and some days folks just couldn't do their job and on others the crane had to stop lifting things because it was windy and too dangerous. The weather delayed the start of the volunteer week by 2 weeks, but luckily lots of people could still make it to do all the work. PHEW!
Remember the ground source heating that is coming from the park? Well this is the trench being dug for the pipes that will go to the plant room, that's the boiler room, actually it's not a boiler room as there won't be any boilers...they're the things you usually have to heat up the water for your radiators to keep your building warm. we haven't got them as our heat comes from under the ground in the park. So we'd better call ours a 'plant room' I wonder why it's called a plant room? It hasn't got any plants in it??? We'll have to ask the engineer and let you know.

Anyway enough of that, here you can see some of the pipes that have come from the boreholes in the park. An underground chamber is being built for them and lots of small pipes will come together at a 'manifold' and then become just two big pipes that go to the plant room in the trench you see the digger digging above.

How does a heat pump work?A heat pump works by driving a working fluid around a refrigeration circuit containing four elements; (1) evaporator, (2) compressor, (3) condenser and (4) expansion valve.The working fluid changes from liquid to gas (evaporates) as heat is absorbed from the heat source (in our case under the park). Later in the cycle, the working fluid condenses to liquid as heat is released to where it is needed.A heat pump can be used for cooling with the addition of a reversing valve that reverses the direction of the working fluid and so the direction of the heat transfer. The central component of the heat pump is the compressor. This is usually driven by an electric motor, although gas engine driven compressors are also available. We will be run ours in reverse in the summer when it is hot and to take heat from the floors and to put it back under the park, clever eh!