–Synergym fitness center | Hitachi VRF project in Logroño, Spain
VRF
The place: fitness center in the basement of a shopping center poses HVAC space challenge
Spanish-born Synergym offers budget-friendly training centers for consumers looking to workout and improve their fitness.
For their new location in Logroño, a small city in the Northern Spain, a venue located at the basement of a shopping center was ideal, as it also including an entrance with street access at the ground floor.
Like all gyms, the installation of a high-performance HVAC was necessary to enable visitors to work out without overheating, and keep the air at comfortable humidity levels regardless of the physical activity and little natural ventilation. In addition, gyms require highly flexible AC. Some rooms (like locker rooms) might require heating while the workout space needs cooling. They also face large fluctuations in occupancy levels, which constantly impact the thermal demand.
The specific layout of the venue was particularly challenging from a space point of view:
- No space available for outdoor units at the exterior.
- Limited space available on the building’s rooftop and in the dropped ceilings.
- The gym’s included large open spaces which required powerful airflow rate.
The solution: a mix of Centrifugal and top-flow VRF was the winning combination
To meet the needs of the facility, a perfect Hitachi Cooling & Heating solution was found, by integrating two types of Hitachi VRF systems.
- A 16HP SET FREE Sigma top-flow unit was installed on at the rooftop. The heat recovery version was chosen as it enables simultaneous cooling and heating of different areas by transferring the exhaust heat from one zone to another.
- Two Centrifugal VRF units were placed inside the dropped ceiling of the gym venue. These are special VRF ‘outdoor’ units which can actually be placed indoors, solving the problem that there was no external space to place normal VRF outdoor units at the street-level.
- Those units were complemented with indoor ducted units. The high external static pressure models helped minimize the refrigerant piping works.
The top-class performance of Hitachi VRF enabled cooling and heating of the gym to the customers’ requirements, despite the difficulties of the location:
- Individual temperature control for each unit, even allowing some zones to be cooled while other are heated.
- VRF technology with precise modulation of the Hitachi Scroll compressor to deliver just the right amount of cooling or heating according to the required loading on the system at any given moment. This means that no oversizing of the system’s capacity was needed to meet the fluctuations in demand throughout the day.
- Superior energy efficiency levels resulting in lower annual energy costs for the gym’s operation.
- Cooling being essential for the gym, a CSNET LITE centralized controller enabled remote management of the system to ensure continual operation.
Architects/Engineers: Bm2 Arquitecture, Engineering & Consulting
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Location
Logroño, Spain
Project
New built
Date of installation
2019
Total System Capacity
34 HP
Outdoor units
RAS-16FSXNSE; RASC-10HNPE; RASC-8HNPE
Indoor units
RPI-8.0FSN3E; RPI-10FSN3E; RPK-0.6FSN4M
Architects/Engineers
Bm2 Arquitecture, Engineering & Consulting
