PROJECT 37
The building also has multiple sub-meters to record internal consumption for cold water , hot water , toilets , borehole , and irrigation .
The owner ’ s operational experience with utilities has shown that toilets are the biggest risk when it comes to water leaks ( for example , mechanism gets stuck , toilets run all day and waste water – can be up to 10 000 litres per day ).
< image > Pipework under covered roof cladding < caption > Pipework under covered roof cladding .
Each stack of five apartments ( 1 per floor ) has its own toilet shaft with a smart water meter on the toilet feed pipe in the top of shaft . Consumption data is checked regularly and compared to the other shafts . Excessive water consumption is flagged and investigated , generally within 48-hours . Without our early leak detection methodology , leaks can waste water for several weeks .
Historically , and without smart meters , we only realised a building had a leak when we received an inflated utility bill from council a month later . The council does not read meters every month and often use estimated readings , which may allow leaks to continue for several months .
The plumbing installation consists of :
• Soil waste and ventilation drainage pipework
• Vertical soil stacks , kitchen waste stacks and waste stacks installed in vertical extended ducts
• Horizontal waste pipes and soil pipes run in dry-wall cavities , raised floors to the external ducts
• Ventilation pipes installed as required
Pipework under covered roof cladding .
< image > spacious entrance < caption > Spacious entrance with natural light .
Spacious entrance with natural light .
Horizontal drainage pipes are collected on the soffit of the upper basement parking level and under the steel parking level roof . Rainwater pipes follow a similar route .
Cold water installation Municipal cold water supplies polyethylene tanks from constant pressure variable speed type booster pumps in the basement plant room . These provide cold water to the building and to the hot water plant .
Hot water plant The plant provided by Elemental Energy Supply Company ( EESCO ) is very innovative . The hot water generation is provided by their own EESCO brand heat pump that uses two heat exchangers for the refrigeration cycle and water heating . These have very small footprints and are highly efficient in terms of heat exchange .
EESCO
HP fan above guard house
The hot water is heated via a brazed plate heat exchanger ( BPHE ) which heats the water with the high temperature refrigerant . The second half of the refrigeration cycle traditionally uses an air to refrigerant fan coil that extracts heat from the ambient air and transfers to the liquid refrigerant , evaporating it back to a gas to complete the cycle .
September 2021 Volume 27 I Number 7 www . plumbingafrica . co . za