Heat Pumps Today

16 April | May 2022 T E C H N I C A L Support climalife.co.uk @climalife FIND US ON: Eco-e cient solutions for Heat Pumps IDS Refrigeration Limited The expert in eco-efficient solutions to service the industry 0117 980 2520 Bio-sourced HTFs Technical advice Service Low GWP Refrigerants Qp Climalife.indd 1 16/03/2022 09:38 Given the very limited space, di culty of supporting the existing strut frame sections, and large number of connection points that required steel spring vibration isolation, it was beneficial to develop some low cost vibration isolators that could relatively easily be installed, provide good vibration isolation (high deflection spring, e ective ‘noise’ pad, and height adjustment) without incorporating unnecessary materials or taking up more space than necessary, which was particularly important as many parts of the plant rooms were very congested. Results The initial results were mixed; with reductions large enough to satisfy the residents at some sites and significant remaining levels and little improvement at others. There were several reasons for this: ° it was di cult to identify all structural bridging points due to the often crowded plant rooms preventing access to view all areas; ° for the same reason it was very di cult to access all of the identified bridging points particularly with the need to keep system running in the occupied buildings; and ° the ground loop pipes exited the plant room through the floor and had been ‘concreted in’ creating a rigid connection to the floor. This rigid connection was generally in a part of the floor close to an external wall providing a short route for connection to the rest of the building. At several sites it became apparent that the issue of ground loop pipe coupling to the floor was significant and we advised that the concrete around the pipes should be broken out (by others). This work was also undertaken while the systems remained in operation and was successful in achieving further reductions of varying significance at di erent premises. This also allowed yet further reductions to be achieved by adjustments and refinements to the other isolating elements. Figure 8 Strut channel decoupled fromwall with isolated support brackets Figure 9 Strut channel decoupled fromwall and floor with isolated support brackets Figure 10 Bespoke vibration isolator decoupling the upper horizontal steel strut from the vertical one Figure 11 Ground loop pipes concreted in Figure 12 Ground loop pipes broken out