Heating goes underground at green centre
October 1st 2007 The new visitor centre at Cley
Marshes, commissioned by Norfolk
Wildlife Trust and designed by LSI
Architects of London, has been
designed to blend in with its
surroundings yet offers all the
necessary modern facilities.
The design was inspired by the
surroundings at Cley Marshes with
a low-profile roof, sedum mosscovered,
sloping almost to ground
level at the back and with a strip of
frameless glass running the length
of the frontage.Appropriately for
an area devoted to nature, the new
visitors centre uses renewable
energy sources to provide light,
heating and hot water. In addition
to a wind turbine there is a NIBE
Energy Systems geothermal unit
harnessing the rain and solar
generated energy stored in the
ground.A surface collector system
has been installed, with around 400
metres of looped plastic tubing
buried roughly 20 centimetres
below the frost line under the open
ground to the front of the visitors
centre.The plastic pipe contains a
non-freezing emulsion of glycol
and water and is linked to a
compact NIBE Fighter 1240 Unit
inside the building.This 12kW
capacity heat-exchanging pump
extracts the absorbed heat from
the water/glycol mixture and
converts it into energy to heat both
the building itself and the hot
water required in it. More articles from NIBE Energy Systems Ltd: | 
