Visitors to the exciting Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, just a stone’s throw from Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, can’t fail to be impressed by the museum’s ‘spaceship like’ modern exterior. The museum is dedicated to the 16th century Tudor Navy warship Mary Rose. The hull and a small selection of the 19,000 artefacts recovered with the ship were on display shortly after the raising in 1982. In September 2009 the ship hall was closed to allow the start of construction of a new museum that was opened at the end of
May 2013. The conservation of the Mary Rose hull should be complete by 2016.
Every major building such as the Mary Rose Museum depends heavily on the installed specialist machinery and systems that ensure the building environment is maintained within design conservation and visitor comfort parameters. Of major importance, located in dedicated plant rooms, are the pumps.
Engineering on the Mary Rose project were Ramboll UK, whilst the prime building contractor was Warings (Bouygues UK). The pumps selected from the huge Wilo range were supplied via Pipe Center, Southampton.
The pumps are situated in one of the neatest plant rooms you’ll see, a benefit of being able to plan a new building such as this from scratch. The plant room incorporates Wilo pumps for the boiler circulation, secondary heating system, secondary hot water system, for chilled water circulation and a secondary chilled water system. The design of the building incorporates a dual duty approach, with two identical pumps operating alongside each other, sharing the load, to ensure guaranteed functionality at all times. The equipment supplied by Wilo for the project also includes two pressurisation units, in line with the design intent to reduce the risk of system failure and subsequent disruption to visitor flow.
