Projects
Overview - Commercial

AWARD WINNING KNX TECHNOLOGY AT THE OLD COURTHOUSE

The Old Courthouse in Douglas has always been a landmark building on the Isle of Man but after the new Courts of Justice were built, it was unoccupied for a decade. In 2008, new building owners decided that they wanted to both restore the courthouse and set a new standard for office accommodation on the island. As part of the restoration, KNX intelligent building technology has been used to achieve both energy savings and other advantages that modern building services can offer. The project's success has resulted in it securing the accolade of KNX UK's Installation Of The Year 2008, undertaken by Building Evolution.

The redevelopment has included retention of the original, architecturally imposing front facade of the Old Courthouse and rebuilding a new modern facility around it.

Some of the design aims for the installation were as follows:

• To provide maximum flexibility and adaptability of the office spaces for the lifetime of the building;
• Provide ease and speed of installation;
• Provide monitoring and supervisory capabilities for a facilities manager;
• Provide integration with many of the building services
• Ensure the capacity of the system would not be compromised now or in the future

The system utilizes KNX/IP for connecting the KNX lines for each level of the building. There is an interface with the building's HVAC system which is achieved by the use of a Daikin BACnet gateway and Intesis KNX BACnet IP client. There is also an interface with the ventilation system which has been achieved with switching actuators and binary input.

A KNX visualisation PC using Jung Facility Pilot for use by the facilities manager is provided to monitor and control lighting, including lamp failure, HVAC, electric heaters, ventilation system, and remote reading of tenant sub-electricity meters.

On each of the three main office levels the Wieland gesis flat cabling system with integrated KNX bus was specified in order to provide a flexible and adaptable cabling infrastructure in the ceilings. There are touch panels which provide control of HVAC and lights for tenants plus a facility for their own locally controlled time programs if required. Lighting control modules from Durable Technologies were used throughout.

When the open plan offices were spilt up for the tenant fit out, the use of KNX meant that further control could easily be easily added for lighting and HVAC, either with push buttons or presence detection depending upon the tenant's requirements.

In order to keep in line with the overall high quality feel of the building, where required, Jung stainless steel push-buttons and frames were used throughout the offices.

Lighting in the landlord areas including the main entrance, staircase, landings, car park, store rooms and WCs are controlled by a combination of time clocks and movement detection from Jung and Theban and Durable Technologies. Emergency light testing is also carried out through the KNX system by the use of key switches connected to binary inputs.

In the basement car park, lights are controlled by a combination of ABB movement detectors with the time clock and logic functions from a Siemens Logo Unit. In order to reduce energy usage the Logo Unit controls the lights so that during working hours, if no movement is detected, then only a third of lights is held on. The group that is held on is also rotated once a week.

 All tenant sub electricity metering is carried out with ABB three and single phase meters with their KNX interface module for easy communication of meter readings to the facility PC.