The £6m purpose built STAR Community Centre, recently opened in Cardiff, is part of the council’s Community Hubs programme, which invests in community services and facilities in priority areas, with the aim of making it easier and more convenient for people to access council and partner services.
The new building includes a 25m swimming pool, gym and fitness suite, a new library, multi-use training and event rooms, and a community café.
As an LA-funded project, the emphasis was on delivering the highest standards of energy efficiency, including designing, specifying and installing solar thermal system that would significantly reduce water heating costs as well as carbon footprint of this new facilities.
Kingspan Thermomax was involved from the early design stages of this project, working closely with consulting engineers Troup Bywater & Anders, principal contractor Willmott Dixon, and local installer Ecofit Energy Systems, to come up with a unique solar thermal solution and to ensure a smooth and trouble-free installation of this challenging and rewarding project.
Consequently, the roof top mounted solar thermal system supplied by Kingspan Thermomax is the largest array installed in Wales to date. The 155sqm solar thermal array is made up of 1,440 Thermomax evacuated tube collectors, horizontally mounted on specially designed low profile frames to reduce visual impact and minimise chances for vandalism. The collector tubes have been individually rotated to face due south to maximise energy output.
The solar system feeds 2 x 1,000 litre Kingspan hot water cylinders and then automatically diverts to heat the swimming pool, providing significant savings for the council. It has been calculated that the system will provide natural gas savings of over 7,000m3 and CO2 savings of nearly 15,000kg per year, cutting annual energy costs by up to 30%.
Taking into account potential RHI payments for twenty years, the system is estimated to save more than £200k over its lifetime, whereas carbon savings will be the equivalent of travelling to the moon and back three times.
The solar system has helped the building achieve BREAM ‘Excellent’ rating – now a planning requirement for all new build projects in Wales.
The installation has also been shortlisted in the H&V News Awards 2017 in the ‘Renewable Project of the Year’ category, as well as in the 2017 Regional Energy Efficiency Awards in the ‘Large Scale Project of the Year’ category.
Councillor Peter Bradbury, Cardiff Council’s Cabinet Member for Community Development, Co-operatives & Social Enterprise commented: “I’m so pleased that the communities of Splott, Tremorfa, Adamsdown and Roath are finally going to get to see inside this amazing new building which is going to be such an asset for the area.
"This is a really innovative facility, our first purpose-built hub, and we hope that by bringing services together in this way we can make a real difference to people in the area, making it easier for them to engage with us and use our services.”
