Solar Whiz Commercial — SuperZu
Case Studies
Business
Region
Dingley Village, Victoria 3172
Client’s Needs
SuperZu is a massive indoor children’s play centre located in a converted warehouse. They boast 2300m2 of floor space that is jam-packed with equipment and playgrounds like ball cannons, climbing volcanoes, climbing caves, trampolines, and slides! They cater to infants right up to preteens and are a popular destination for afternoon activities and birthday parties.
SuperZu was having serious issues with heat and dust throughout the centre. The centre is converted from a 1990s warehouse, which was built on concrete slabs with a corrugated iron roof and thin foil sheets under the roof panels for insulation. This meant that the building had extremely poor ventilation. The existing ridgeline ventilation wasn’t removing the heat and letting in large amounts of dust inside.
Due to the nature of the building, it quickly and easily became very hot indoors. Even on mild days around 22 degrees, indoor temperatures quickly rose to above 30 degrees. This meant that on hotter summer days, temperatures often become uncomfortably hot, nearing 40 degrees closer to the peak centreline. This was a major concern for customers, staff and management.
Initially, SuperZu installed Big Ass Fans to try to deal with the heat issue. However, they quickly realised that the fans evenly distributed the heat around the centre and didn’t actually help the heat issue. In fact, the fans made it worse by creating a convection oven effect that circulated the hot air throughout the whole facility. What they needed was to remove the heat. That’s when they got in contact with Solar Whiz.
Our Solution
After our initial inspection Solar Whiz recommended 12 units be installed for optimal heat extraction. We suggested that all the fans should be wired down to a single controller board to give employees the ability to turn individual fans on and off as needed.
At first, only 8 units were installed in the facility. Most of the fans were positioned on the ridgeline (as is general procedure) aside from one that was installed lower. This is because it needed to be positioned over an area inside the building that would have otherwise been underventilated due to the nature of the internal layout of the centre.
During installation, the existing ridgeline ventilation system was sealed off in order to stop it from compromising the effectiveness of the new units. This had the extra effect of stopping the dust from getting in. Since then, SuperZu has removed the old ridgeline ventilation completely.
Results
There was an almost instantaneous difference in temperature once the initial 8 units were installed. The centre was immediately cooler and much more comfortable for the employees to work in and the kids to play in.
“On those 22 degree days the centre remains almost the same as the ambient temperature outside. On hotter days, it definitely gets warmer inside but not unbearable like it used to, and the hot air that was rising and getting trapped in the roof space is now extracted, which means we can use the fans on a low speed to circulate air, instead of them just pushing the trapped hot air down onto our customers.” – David Rivers (Manager)
The Big Ass Fans haven’t been used since. They were very expensive to operate because they use 3-phase power and the installation costs were extremely high because the roof had to be reinforced where the fans were installed.
SuperZu have since installed another 4 fans to achieve the best possible ventilation results. They are now saving money and energy by operating a far more powerful and efficient Solar Whiz system, and couldn’t be happier with the results!