LO-FI LEISURE POP-UP BATHHOUSE


Staying cool with tiles of ice


There was one problem with the chiller – it kept trying to defrost when the temperature fell


The ice men cometh


The ice room is effectively a huge freezer, with highly insulated walls. Somebody & Son cut expanded polystyrene (EPS) into a 300 mm blocks themselves to ensure that insulation was continuous. Another 100 mm layer was applied to the external façade to prevent thermal bridging. Part of the cooling strategy was to create a thermal store for the coolth generated by the chiller. To do so, Somebody & Son came up with the ingenious idea of covering the walls in ice.


They made 12x12 cm tiles of ice and put them in horizontal silicone trays. As the room warms, ice melts into the angle, and then into channels in the corners of the room. Water collects in large containers, which act as another form of thermal storage (as well as giving


12 CIBSE Journal October 2012


guests another means of cooling down).


‘Storing the coolth in the ice room was key to reducing cooling requirements,’ says Smythe. ‘As a result we got away with using a smaller chiller.’ The chiller used for the ice room was a standard through-the-wall monoblock unit, which Smythe expects to sell to a shop when the project comes to an end. It remains at around


-1 O


C during the day, dropping to -6 O night.


C over


There was one problem with the chiller – it kept trying to defrost when the temperature fell. ‘It’s typically used at 0 to -0.5 O


C, it would automatically defrost’ says Smythe. ‘We’re putting it under unusual conditions.’ Smythe says


so, when it goes as low as -6 O


he couldn’t find anything on the market that was suitable for the ice room. ‘We had to keep turning the chiller off and back on again to disable the defrosting,’ says Smythe, who was keen for the frost to form for aesthetic reasons. The designer was


C


pleased with what had been achieved on such a limited budget, but there were a couple of regrets. ‘We would have liked to have spent more time insulating the eaves and junctions and making the building more airtight,’ says Smythe, ‘but the timescale was so tight at six weeks’. ‘We also realised we were wasting energy keeping drinks cool in the bar fridge at night. We’re thinking about wheeling them into the ice room but need to find a suitable trolley.’


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