SA Affordable Housing March - April 2020 // ISSUE: 81 | Page 34

PROJECT
CBD which doesn’t suit families, we would encourage the mix
of tenants to single people by only having bachelor units.
“The Village houses many young doctors, accountants and
lawyers amongst other professionals. The location to
business districts and the affordability of the apartments is
very attractive.
Even if the rental is a little more than someone wishes to
pay, Friedman says many people are persuaded once they do
the math, and realise they are saving on a lot of other
expenses that they may previously have paid for: free Wifi,
gym, and reduced transport costs. “We’ve taught our leasing
agents to quantify the numbers for prospective tenants.
“Apart from the efficiency provided by the EESCO heat
pump system, we are looking at a grey water system, and are
testing out various systems, albeit such systems are
extraordinarily expensive. All of our sites have solar
generated power. We’re quite gung ho on solar and believe
battery technology will improve with time and get cheaper.
Africrest Properties is aggressively looking to purchase more
buildings to convert from commercial to residual apartments
as well as to purchase large pieces of land to develop new
residential developments in the R4,500 to R7,500/ month
rental market.
DESIGN ISSUES AND PLUMBING
An important aspect of the design of the buildings was to
ensure that, on what is quite a dense development, tenants
would not be looking into each other’s apartments, or into a
brick wall. “We started the design process with what
furniture would go into each room, and then ensured the
rooms were large enough. Our brief to the architect was to
design the units around furniture.
EESCO (Elemental Energy) is a company whose core
business is commercial heat pumps and hot and cold - water
reticulation. It is currently installing an indirect ‘district
heating’ system at The Village in Bramley. The biggest heat
pump that it has manufactured and installed to date is a
500kw machine, while the current project under review
involves a 320kw heat pump.
The complex has been constructed by Tyris Construction,
with construction having commenced in January 2018, and
Phase 2 having commenced in the beginning of 2019 with a
scheduled completion date in May 2020. The first two blocks
were handed over in November last year.
Andrew Lowe of EESCO (Elemental Energy), says: “EESCO
was brought in to do the hot water system, for the seven
blocks of both phases of the entire development. The brief
was to design and supply an energy-efficient hot water
system to supply 459 flats housing approximately 1 350
people. The design was to include hot water storage, heating
system, pressure pumps and ring main feed to each flat,
primarily using the municipal water mains.
“Instead of putting in seven heat pumps and seven tanks
– one for each block – we decided on a central plant which
would distribute the hot water to each block via a ‘primary
ring main’. The primary circuit exchanges heat with each
block’s ‘secondary circuit’ via our imported ‘Alfa Laval’
double pass plate heat exchangers. The municipal water
enters the BPHE (Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger) at a design
pressure of four bar and incoming temperature of between
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MARCH - APRIL 2020
SAAffordHousing
Grant Friedman, a director of Africrest Properties.
A typical kitchen at The Village.
Andrew Lowe of EESCO (Elemental Energy).
12°C and 20°C and is instantly heated via the very efficient
‘double pass’ unit, to the setpoint which is currently 58°C,”
says Lowe.
The primary heating circuit is a water / glycol mixture
which is heated to between 65°C and 70°C by our locally
manufactured heat pump via its BPHE condensing
component. The primary heating liquid is stored in three
11 000ℓ steel glass flake epoxy-lined low-pressure
storage vessels. The design pressure for the primary
storage is only two bar making these tanks more
economical than the standard four bar rated vessels.
These storage vessels are stored on ground level, the heat
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