We hear how commercial heat recovery has been deployed in a Carmarthen health and wellbeing project.

Vent-Axia’s award-winning Sentinel Apex units have been specified for the landmark Carmarthen Health and Wellbeing Hwb project, delivering energy-efficient ventilation to this transformative multi-million-pound development. The 245,000ft2 scheme is repurposing the former Carmarthen Debenhams building into a Health and Wellbeing Hub.

Facilities

The new hub will offer a range of services including public healthcare, a Customer Service Hwb, and new 24 hour Actif gym. Other facilities will include a family entertainment centre, with indoor adventure golf, toy town soft play, E-Go Karting, and TAG Active. Part-funded by the Welsh Government’s IRCF Fund, with further funding from the UK Government, the development will benefit from Sentinel Apex units installed across all three floors of the building, with four Sentinel Apex HR21 specified to meet the demand of the gym area alone.

Formerly a shopping centre, the building has been redesigned as a dynamic Health and Wellbeing Hwb for the people of Carmarthen. The extensive refurbishment involved a full reconfiguration of the internal space to create a welcoming environment that balances health, wellbeing, and entertainment under one roof. The project team includes: main contractor, Bouygues; M&E Consultant, Hoare Lea; Sub-Contractor, FP Hurley & Sons (Crosshands), and Distributor, Ventilation Warehouse. The Sentinel Apex commercial heat recovery units were specified for their energy efficiency, good indoor air quality, and their ultra-quiet operation, as well as meeting stringent Specific Fan Power (SFP) and dBA acoustic requirements, ensuring a comfortable and compliant building.

Neil Higgins, Contracts Manager, F P Hurley & Sons said: “We chose the Sentinel Apex units because they deliver exceptionally quiet operation and low Specific Fan Power, ensuring they met all Building Regulation requirements. The units were also available in a wide range of airflows, allowing us to specify the correct units for each space. In short, they offered the ideal balance of airflow, low noise, and energy efficiency.”

Adam Bullon from Ventilation Warehouse added: “I have worked with Vent-Axia for a long time. The Carmarthen Health and Wellbeing Hwb was an interesting job with the Sentinel Apex ticking all the right boxes for the project, including energy efficiency, noise, and ease of maintenance. Twenty Sentinel Apex units were delivered over three project stages.”

Maximum comfort

A brilliant fit for the Carmarthen Health and Wellbeing Hwb project, the Vent-Axia Sentinel Apex is the next generation of commercial heat recovery ventilation, providing specifiers help in creating low-carbon buildings. The Sentinel Apex is specifically designed to have a high level of energy efficiency with industry-leading SFP and low embodied carbon. Individuals using the Carmarthen space will find maximum occupant comfort as this has been a priority for the development of the Sentinel Apex unit, operating quietly whilst improving indoor air quality.

The Sentinel Apex offers the highest level of IAQ and thermal comfort, whilst maintaining the lowest energy and noise levels, both of which were vital for this refurbishment. Offering up to 93% heat recovery efficiency (EN308 test method), ultra-low sound levels, which are independently tested and verified by SRL Technical Services Limited, and extremely low SFP, the Sentinel Apex has notable performance improvement in comparison with previous commercial heat recovery units and delivers ‘Simply more as Standard’. Its intuitive controls are compatible with Vent-Axia’s range of Sentinel-X Sensors, allowing for easily configurable set points ensuring optimised IAQ, in line with Part F of the Building Regulations, all while minimising ventilation energy consumption.

In order to achieve the highest levels of IAQ, the Sentinel Apex unit features ePM10 50% extract and ePM1 55% supply filters (M5/F7 equivalent) as standard. By carefully selecting the filter media and by utilising the latest motors and impellers (with better than IE5 efficiency), the Sentinel Apex maintains an extremely low SFP with low sound levels whilst maintaining excellent IAQ. The Sentinel Apex also aids thermal comfort with an integral automatic summer bypass that is designed to provide free cooling when available but is sized to eliminate performance loss.

Specifiers can choose from five sizes, as the Apex has been developed for a wide range of applications, and delivers airflows up to 4000m3/hr. At the Carmarthen Health and Wellbeing Hwb 20 Sentinel Apex units were installed, including four Sentinel Apex HR21s used in the ground floor gym area alone, while Sentinel Apex HR15 units were used for the offices on floor 1 and floor 2, displaying the wide range of Apex units used in the project, in turn ensuring air flow meets design requirements in different parts of the building.

Designed to operate on the principles of demand ventilation, the Sentinel Apex is ideal for applications where the rooms are used at different times of the day by a variable number of people, making it well-tailored to the Carmarthen Health and Wellbeing Hwb. The Sentinel Apex system, with the matched range of Sentinel-X Sensors, can monitor occupancy and air quality, responding by adjusting the ventilation accordingly, to maintain the IAQ and thermal comfort within predefined limits, whilst recovering up to 93% of the extracted thermal energy.

In control

The Sentinel Apex’s new advanced integrated control system has 3 levels of interface, all as standard: simple purpose-designed onboard user interface controlled incorporating an alphanumerical, 2-line display which lets users know how the system is operating with 4-button keypad for fan status and a basic commissioning setup mounted within the control panel. This allows easy commissioning and set-up. A full range of wired and wireless communication sensors available, with either through local mains or battery-powered options.

The controls are designed to take the complexity out of the control system making it easy for the user, with two levels of interface: one for the engineer allowing commissioning and one simpler one for the end-user allowing them to easily monitor and boost the system if additional ventilation is required.

Designed to have a low embodied carbon footprint, Vent-Axia has used the CIBSE TM65 data collection methodology to collect accurate, detailed embodied carbon information for the Sentinel Apex, working from a component level up. This methodology ensures data is comprehensive, accurate, reliable and up-to-date, making it easier for specifiers to focus on designing low carbon sustainable buildings.

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Vent-Axia is delighted to have won an award at the prestigious CIBSE Building Performance Awards 2024.

The Sussex-based company won the ‘Product or Innovation of the Year – Air Quality’ category for its Sentinel Apex, the next generation of commercial heat recovery ventilation. The winners were announced at a glittering awards ceremony on Thursday 29 February 2024 at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, London.

The CIBSE Building Performance Awards (BPAs) 2024 recognises the people, products and projects that demonstrate engineering excellence in the built environment. They are the only industry awards that focus on actual, measured performance outcomes, and not just design intent or performance specifications. Vent-Axia beat stiff competition in the ‘Product or Innovation of the Year – Air Quality’ category. After a rigorous judging process, the judges selected the Sentinel Apex, which they noted supplies fresh, healthy, filtered air to improve indoor air quality (IAQ), removing pollutants such as moisture, carbon dioxide and external fumes.

“We are very proud that our Vent-Axia Sentinel Apex has been recognised by the CIBSE Building Performance Awards. This marks the third industry award for the innovative Sentinel Apex since its launch in November 2023. We understand the challenges that come with designing low-carbon buildings, which means every aspect has been considered in the Apex’s development to maximise its energy efficiency and performance, while providing excellent IAQ, ultra-low sound levels and thermal comfort. We have also designed the Apex to have a low embodied carbon footprint and to help consultants we have used CIBSE TM65 data collection methodology to provide accurate and detailed carbon information”, said Lorna Kerrigan-Hall, Sales Director C&I at Vent-Axia.

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Breathing Buildings has added to its award-winning natural ventilation with heat recycling (NVHR) range with its new NVHR 1700.

This larger unit is ideal for leisure centres, halls, sport facilities, shopping centres, offices, schools, and other buildings with high heat gains, with the NVHR 1700 offering excellent ventilation and thermal comfort. Meanwhile, in school classroom applications the NVHR 1700 now allows one unit to be specified rather than two, which means a simpler and quicker installation.

Breathing Building’s NVHR 1700 offers enhanced natural ventilation with hybrid technology in a slimline, compact, lightweight and energy efficient unit. The unit is designed to fulfil the ventilation needs automatically with its demand-controlled equipment, best-in-class flowrate, low noise levels and low 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.

The NVHR 1700 also boasts other additional benefits beyond Breathing Building’s current NVHR range of products, since one single unit can be used to ventilate a room or space rather than two smaller units. As a result, when installing the NVHR 1700 only one penetration through the external façade is needed rather than two and only one external weather louvre is required. Plus, since there is only one unit to wire to less cabling is required during installation and only one power supply and one fuse spur are needed. All these benefits save time and so costs when it comes to installation. In addition, the NVHR 1700 also features an upgraded user interface which makes it easier for occupants to control the ventilation and so achieve the indoor air quality and comfort required.

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