ECCO Heating Products Ltd. supplied a complete geothermal system to provide heating and cooling for a 30,000-plus sq. ft. community centre at Mt. Currie First Nation, infrastructure long awaited by the patient people of Lil'Wat Nation who live 20 minutes from Whistler, B.C.. The Resort Municipality of Whistler will be the centre of skiing in the 2010 Olympics and nearby Mt. Currie has been gaining new economic ground, and turning to green energy solutions and geothermal savings, in the meantime.
Rob Kersbergen of Whistler Geothermal is the mechanical contractor who was awarded the contract to complete the work for the much-needed Lil'Wat facility. The preceding community facilities were dilapidated and unavailable. ECCO Heating Products provided expertise and guidance after conducting a site survey with Whistler Geothermal for a detailed energy analysis of the proposed community centre. Kersbergen says, "We laid in 120,000 feet of pipe (over 22 miles) a year ago in a closed loop system, done in a horizontal array," which is laid in by excavation to about 7 feet of depth.
"It is a compact slinky coil design consisting of 120 circuits with 800 feet of pipe in each circuit, there are 12 circuits per header, and the headers are connected to a commercial VFD
(Variable Frequency Drive) flow station, which is located in the building's mechanical room. The VFD flow Station controls the volume and pressure required to meet the flow requirements through the ground heat exchanger and geothermal heat pumps from the earth to the building or from the building to the earth, depending on the building's demand," based on outdoor temperatures and building occupant requirements.
The new community centre will contain an HVAC system (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) with Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRV's). The HVAC system incorporates a series of Fan/Coil modules to utilize hot or chilled water supplied by the geothermal system to supply heating and cooling throughout the building. The system was designed so that it could provide heating and cooling simultanously based on the building's exposures and occupancy levels.
The new community centre will contain an HVAC system (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) with Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRV's). The HVAC system incorporates a series of Fan/Coil modules to utilize hot or chilled water supplied by the geothermal system to supply heating and cooling throughout the building. The system was designed so that it could provide heating and cooling simultanously based on the building's exposures and occupancy levels.
Kersbergen explains how the HVAC system involves multiple heat transfer modules (Heat Recovery Core) to extract heat from stale air being exhausted to the outdoors and tranfers that heat to the incoming fresh air stream into the building. "The Aluminum Core design prevents any cross contamination of exhaust and fresh air streams, only the heat is transfered, not the air." Mechanical engineers design the buildings with these energy efficiencies. They work with building loads (including numbers of people, doors, windows, and activities) and air flow calculations heat loss calculations.
"I did the field work on the geothermal system, and with the technical expertise of Paul Vaillancourt of ECCO Heating Products, was able to modify the original mechanical design without compromising the performance or quality of the system." Paul Vaillancourt of Ecco Heating Products Ltd. is one of Canada's leading experts in the geothermal industry, says Kersbergen, "and he added tremendous value to this project."
It is estimated design changes "will have saved Mt. Currie's administration a few hundred thousand dollars, literally," says Kersbergen. "They were on a tight budget and had requirements for air quality in the two-level building." It's a steel clad, steel frame building that has 21,000 square feet on the main floor and another 13,000 estimated square feet on the second level.
Kersbergen has been in the area for 21 years, "from the first stop sign to the first elevator." He says, "Lil"Wat Nation is progressive and doing a lot of development and the community centre in Mt. Currie will be filling with occupants within a few weeks. I predict it will be full by the end of the year." The centre has a reception area, elders centre, day care centre, band offices, business offices, and other features like a gymnasium and a full kitchen.
"Part of the building is a gymnasium with a higher roof that reduces square footage on the second floor." The facility was built to support a community of about 3,000 people in Mt Currie, and in the long run a building construction of this type should last 50 years. Mt. Currie has two sites, says Kersbergen, "including the old settlement and a new site up the hill that has a medical centre, fire hall, and grocery store."
Leonard Andrew is the chief, says Kersbergen, "and his brother Fraser was the superintendent on the community centre project." The community is growing and developing capacity to house people. "There will be a few homes built in the new area and geothermal has been proposed," but the go-ahead could be an INAC decision, and, "Will they ante up the extra money to go geothermal?"
