Clare College, Memorial Court
Decarbonisation strategy for college-listed student accommodation
Client: Clare College
Status: In Design Development
OVERVIEW
Memorial Court is a collection of buildings owned and operated by Clare College, Cambridge, comprising Memorial, Thirkill, Lerner and Ashby courts as well as the college library. The site primarily consists of student accommodation but also features staff office accommodation, conference, and lecture facilities within the Gillespie Centre.The majority of buildings on the site are Grade II listed, with the extensive grounds covered by the local conservation area. The existing heating and hot water infrastructure is approaching the end of its life and is due for imminent replacement.
JGC was appointed to undertake a decarbonisation appraisal of the site and develop a strategy for re-supplying heat to each of the existing plant rooms using a low-carbon heat source. The separate buildings comprising Memorial Court include shared services. Nevertheless, each building is generally divided into several separate stair cores, each with its own boiler plant located in the basement and a distribution system supplied by gas boilers.
The site's heritage implications make it challenging to resupply each plant room individually. Through an evaluation of multiple resupply options, it was determined that a central energy centre and heat network distribution system offered the best compromise between decarbonisation, heritage, and cost.
The proposed central heat network will consist of central air source heat pumps supplying a distributed below-ground heat network to re-supply the existing distributed heating plantrooms within basements. This approach would allow centralised heat pumps to be located in a discrete location, away from the main building, where noise and other sources of nuisance can be minimised by keeping equipment away from the building façade and occupied areas. Thermal substations could be installed in each basement plant room to connect the heat network to the existing heating and hot water pipework that already serves the buildings.
JGC have worked closely with the client and wider design team to develop an energy centre solution that will meet the building’s heating and hot water needs within the constraints of the site's heritage context. The energy centre proposals are currently in the design development stage.