An indoor climate for productivity and learning

An indoor climate for productivity and learning

A new-built school aiming for a good indoor climate

Sophie Scholl is a vocational school in Bremerhaven, Germany. It is a new-built building with a total of 14 learning rooms and educational workshops instead of the more traditional classrooms along far reaching corridors. Today about 300 students attend the school and study for a professional future within nutrition and health, textile design and much more.

The Sophie Scholl school is making way in Germany in terms of indoor climate in an educational environment. Careful considerations have been made to the options available for creating a good indoor climate, favourable for learning and comfort.

An air handling unit with rotary heat exchanger

In this case, the Sophie Scholl school was provided a Swegon GOLD RX unit for ventilation, heating and/or cooling. The letters RX indicates that the unit has a rotary heat exchanger which is a heat exchanger that consists of a rotating wheel with a multitude of small ducts made of aluminium. The warm extract air heats the ducts which transfers heat to the colder supply air, or vise versa. Meaning, the rotary heat exchanger can also be used in a highly efficient manner to recover cooling energy.

To recover energy is obviously a relief for the environment as less energy is needed to heat and/or cool the supply air to keep the temperature indoors at a comfortable level. Further, when energy is used in an efficient manner there is normally a direct and positive impact on building economics. 

 

Learn more about heat recovery in our technical guide

An energy-efficient air handler

Our Swegon GOLD air handling units are also energy-efficient for a coulpe of other reasons. Firstly our extensive experience of constructing ventilation units has resulted in a casing design that boasts a high air-tightness class, minimum thermal bridges and high thermal insulation which makes the unit reliable in relation to weather impact.

Further, the air handling units are provided with our own GOLD Wing+ fans and our IQlogic control system. They are developed to fit perfectly together and allow for an optimal operation and excellent control of the fans. This makes the units particularly energy-efficient, well-suited for variable loads and ideal for demand-controlled ventilation.

 

More information about energy efficiency in relation to HVAC

Get familiar with Swegon GOLD air handling units

Choosing air diffusers

The main reason for ventilating a room or a building is to replace used air with fresh air. There are a number of ways in which this may be done, and the range of air diffusers is extensive. To be familiar with the ventilation principles easen the process of chosing a particular kind of air diffuser, or a certain set of different ones. However, to ensure a comfortable indoor climate it is important not to forget about the ceiling height, purpose of the building, the number of people in the premises and their activities. 

In the case of the Sophie Scholl school, more than 40 Swegon VIREO ceiling air diffusers were chosen for their ability to introduce air of a significantly lower temperature than the room temperature in a fixed pattern.

 

More about ventilation principles in our guide

WISE for a demand-controlled indoor climate

To crown this HVAC-solution, the school was provided with a Swegon WISE system for demand-controlled ventilation (DCV). WISE is a complete system comprising all the products needed to allow for the indoor climate to adjust to the actual need. It ventilates, cools and heats neither too much – which costs energy – nor too little – which adversely affects comfort.

WISE is an attractive system for almost any kind of building application where comfort is of great priority. Since schools have a varying occupancy pattern and studies show that parts of a school might be utilised as little as 35% of the day, a DCV system like Swegon WISE will make a significant difference in terms of energy-consumption compared to basic ventilation.

Learn more about schools in our experts' blogs