Case studies

Downer Building

Located in Wiri, Auckland, the Downer Head Office building was completed in two stages – with Stage 1 commencing in 2011, and Stage 2 currently nearing completion.

The Challenge

To provide an effective solution to meet the heating and cooling requirements of a large office building featuring an equal mix of open plan areas, various meeting rooms and smaller individual office spaces.

The Solution

The varying requirements of the different spaces within the building meant the Mitsubishi Electric PURY “R2” system was the obvious solution. Stage two also featured –BS treated condensers to provide added protection against corrosion. With much of the building’s frontage largely constructed of glass, solar gains during summer months as well as thermal loss over winter had to be accounted for when calculating cooling and heating loads.

Stage one of this project mainly featured mid- and high-static ducted indoor units for what was, at the time, a large number of open plan spaces within the building. Smaller one-way cassettes were utilised for individual enclosed offices and meeting rooms.

Stage two, which will be completed in the coming weeks, was comprised of more one-way cassettes and slim-line ducted units for the smaller office spaces which had been created since the completion of stage one. A 7.1kW split system “PKA Series” high wall was also added to cater for the cooling requirements of the first floor server room.

Two AG-150A touch-screen central controllers tie both systems together, with individual indoor unit control afforded to occupants via either a wall-mounted PAC-YT51CRB “simple controller” or PAR-31MAA “deluxe controller”. Time scheduling was also incorporated into the system to carry out scheduled functions.