Edgecliff Post Office Redevelopment
The Edgecliff Post Office Redevelopment is a medium-sized commercial project where SEED Engineers were engaged to address the mechanical engineering challenges associated with renovating the ground floor of a heritage-listed building. This project required careful planning and innovative solutions to meet the specific constraints of replacing two existing fan coil units (FCUs) and designing ductwork for an open office plan, all while preserving the building’s historical integrity and maintaining aesthetic appeal.
| Client: | Ambient Services |
| Work Type: | Commercial |
| Sector: | Office Building |
| Size: | Medium |
| Disciplines Engaged: | Mechanical Engineering |
The Challenges Faced
Edgecliff project consists the renovation of ground floor of the existing building. The scope included replacing 2 off exisitng FCUs and to provide the ductwork design to cover the entire open office plan. The Building itself was an heritage listed and so, we had restrictions in choosing the FCU and the exisiting Airconditioning system didn’t have an outside air system or an outside air louvre. The Architect wanted to leave the ceiling open so that brought along other challenges like aesthetic aspects of the ducts since they are visible to the occupants and, FCU can only be located at the ceiling above the toilet.
The Solution Provided
With every challenges, SEED has it’s own ways of dealing and solving them. We had the contractor selected FCUs considering like for like replacement. We could save significant amount of the budget by downsizing the FCUs after performing a heatload calculation and after liaising with the supplier and the contrator, which was also required to save the design from “air stratification’. The solution for the absence of Outside Air was solved by the introduction of an Outside air fan and an outside air louvre. The solution for the aesthetic factor of the ductwork, we have introduced internally insulated spiral oval ductwork which would suite well with the open ceiling arrangement of the space. Another major challenge we have faced was to restrict the FCUs inside the ceiling sapce above the toilets with the outside air fan. Proper arrangement and planning resulted in everything aligning perfectly in place to solve the issues in this project.
