project
51
Warming up the
student body
The Witbank Student Accommodation building has been completely
refurbished, and houses a gobsmacking 50 000 litres of hot water used
as the heating medium and features the latest in technology with the
biggest heat accumulation system on the continent.
By Fiona Ingham
Witbank, which is Afrikaans for ‘white ridge’, is
named after a white sandstone rim where wagon
drivers used to stop. It is a coal mining town on the
Mpumalanga highveld, 120km from Johannesburg
and 100km from Pretoria. The town is at the
epicentre of Africa’s largest coalfields, power
stations and steel manufacturing industries. It lies
on the eastern side of the Maputo Development
Corridor. In 2006, its name changed from Witbank to
eMalahleni, which is a Nguni name meaning ‘place
of coal’.
It is here that Tshwane University of Technology has two
satellite campuses, which naturally creates demand for
student housing. The Witbank Student Accommodation
building, comprising Blocks A and B, was not built as
student accommodation. Before the refurbishment,
Block B was used for residential purposes with a retail
ground floor and Block A was used as offices. The
building was converted to meet the pressing demand for
student housing, explains Graham Elsey of AGE Plumbing
Design Technicians. “Students were queueing up for this
accommodation long before the building was finished,”
Continued on page 53 >>
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
November 2016 Volume 22 I Number 9