Newtown Telecommunication Facility – HVAC, Building and Electrical Upgrade
Ryan Wilks recently completed a major air conditioning upgrade and associated building works at the Newtown Telecommunication Facility to provide a new equipment room for the NBN rollout. This was Ryan Wilks’ second major NBN upgrade following the successful completion of the City South site upgrade.
The Newtown site was selected as one of the major NBN hubs for fitout. The works involved the demolition of an existing kitchen area, an adjoining meeting room and battery room on level 1 and fitout to become new dedicated NBN equipment room complete with new mechanical plantroom to provide 120kW cooling capacity and plantroom area.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
Like most projects associated with the NBN the project had a tight time line to completion and the usual budget constraints. As part of the design review process Ryan Wilks were able to offer significant cost and time savings by offering a number of alternate options, which the client accepted.
The air conditioning works involved the installation of 4 off Stulz CPU (Computer room Package Units) units to provide 120kW N+1 cooling capacity located in a purpose built plantroom at the end of the new equipment room.
The installed Stulz units are the latest European technology offering innovative leading edge design (such as EC fans with speed control, environmentally friendly refrigerant R407C), long term running cost savings, and are a new direction for the client.
The three new units are connected to common supply plenum which in turn provides cold air to the equipment room into dedicated cold aisles by way of droppers and grilles mounted within the superstructure framework. The dropper fitoff was finished off by a Ryan Wilks initiative, a fully welded plastic isolation frame with concealed fixings to provide electrical isolation between the duct and superstructure.
Warm air from the dedicated Hot Aisle is then drawn back to the units thru an overhead duct. One end of this duct is connected to the new plantroom; the other end is connected to a relief air fan which is then connected to louvres installed within the window frames of the façade to provide for operation of an economy cycle.
The day to day operation of the new air conditioning units is all controlled from the Stulz units’ internal controllers. This controller provides units start/stop, weekly changeover, fault logging, auto changeover and unit alarms. Should the lead unit controller fail for any reason the second unit controller will take over. The unit controllers cover all functions with the exception of the operation of the economy cycle, which due to standardised client economy cycle run parameters, is controlled by an Innotech controller located in the new MSSB 1-1.
New refrigeration pipework (8 circuits, 4 per unit) were run from the units and up the side façade of the building to new condenser units located on the roof. The pipework design provided unique challenges due to their long length of over 50 metres that was complicated by a vertical pipe rise of 17 metres requiring the installation of oil traps every 5 metres. This meant that Ryan Wilks and Stulz worked hand in hand to finalise the piping design to determine pipe sizes, system capacity and the installation of multiple traps in the vertical pipes.
This project was another example of Ryan Wilks innovation by offering our clients an alternate option, completing critical cut overs within tight time restraints and completing the works on time, on budget and to the satisfaction of our client.
We are proud of this project and thank our client for the opportunity to complete this important air-conditioning project.
Value $550k