The Guildhall Art Gallery in London is benefiting from
state-of-the-art temperature and humidity monitoring thanks to Sontay’s innovative SonNet wireless system. Installed with the minimum of disruption to the gallery space as part of the gallery’s Building Management System (BMS), the new
Sontay's SonNet system was recently used at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London.
T
he Guildhall Art Gallery, established in 1886, is home to a selection of historic pieces including 17th century portraits, pre-Raphaelite
masterpieces and the world famous Magna Carta. The building itself is full of history; the first Guildhall Art Gallery was almost entirely destroyed by fire during a Second World War air raid in 1941.
Large parts of the collection were moved to underground storage and 164 paintings, drawings and prints and 20 sculptures were lost. A temporary structure was built until 1985 when the City decided to redevelop the site and add a new gallery on its lower levels. In 1987, the remains of the original gallery were demolished and the new gallery finally opened to the public in August 1999.
The gallery was in need of temperature and humidity sensors to monitor the ambient conditions, control the energy being consumed and protect the artwork. As the art gallery is a listed building, a wired solution was not an option so Hertfordshire-based controls specialist, Comfort Controls, chose Sontay’s SonNet wireless system. “We have worked with the City of London for over 20 years now and have built an excellent relationship with them,” comments Kris Mitchell, Technical Director at Comfort Controls. “The buildings range from usual schools and offices, to higher profile buildings such as the Guildhall Art Gallery. Housing millions of pounds worth of artwork, the space needed to be controlled to very specific temperature and humidity settings. These are not just in the public gallery areas, but also in the picture stores and various workshops throughout the site. In addition there are the head office spaces for many of the City Of London departments, which are also controlled and monitored from the Continuum system. These are all monitored constantly from the front end workstations on the site.” Previously, the Guildhall Art Gallery functioned without any space temperature sensors. Instead, temperature and humidity was controlled by duct-mounted sensors and readings in the space were manually taken by a member of staff using a hand held device with the data. This was extremely inefficient. Comfort Controls identified that a room-based system could provide much more accurate, automatic readings and deliver a far more reliable, user- friendly and robust solution for the gallery.
Sontay sensors are helping to lower energy costs as well as protecting the famous artwork on display.
Following a site survey, Comfort Controls installed 25 temperature and humidity sensors throughout the upper and lower gallery, which were connected via hardwired routers to the Schneider Electric BMS.
“Installing SonNet was really easy and a great option for a historic building such as the Guildhall Art Gallery,” says Kris Mitchell, Technical Director at Comfort Controls. “Without any space condition monitoring, unnecessary energy was being wasted, and the artefacts on display were being put at risk. By fitting SonNet, the Guildhall Art Gallery is now able to monitor and control its energy use, resulting in better conditions for the artwork on display.” Kris continues: “Due to the gallery being occupied and
installation works being very restrictive, when we tendered to install a new temperature and humidity monitoring system we decided to use wireless. The installation was simple, as we just stuck the sensors to the
brickwork at high level using Velcro pads. There are a number of
eliminates concerns with reception and reliability often associated with existing ‘point-to-point’ wireless systems. “If a sensor detects a problem with the signal, it will automatically re-route to find the strongest available path to the receiver. Interference with other radio devices in the same frequency spectrum has also been addressed through a proprietary algorithm which continually adapts to site conditions.”
Using Sontay temperature and humidity sensors in spaces such as art galleries or museums makes a huge difference to the preservation and condition of the displays. For example, if the level of humidity is low, paintings will release moisture into the atmosphere, which can cause them to dry out. In contrast, if the
atmosphere has a high level of humidity, the painting will absorb moisture, which may threaten the integrity of the painted surface. By using sensors, galleries such as Guildhall can quickly react if there is a change in the atmosphere, preventing any damage to the, sometimes, priceless pieces of art.
“The SonNet range is cost effective and easy to install, and the new additions
wired routers at strategic locations throughout the site and the sensors communicate via these back to a central JACE controller. This takes in the Sontay wireless readings, including battery levels and signal strength, and converts them to BACnet signals. The Continuum system is native BACnet and so can read these signals direct from the JACE controller making all the wireless readings available inside the BMS. We use the wireless temperature and humidity readings to control the air handling unit plant to make sure they are kept within 2°C of temperature set point and within 5% relative humidity of humidity set point.”
The battery powered SonNet devices in the gallery are designed around a robust 2.4 GHz, 802.15.4 self-healing tree topology. This
24 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER AUGUST 2015
broaden the range of applications it can be used for,” says Sandy Damm, Managing Director at Sontay. “In buildings where wired solutions are not an option, such as Guildhall, SonNet can be used to bring the same level of monitoring to a BMS, significantly reducing energy wastage and costs. It also gives building managers the option of updating or changing the location of sensors easily. With non-wired solutions such as SonNet becoming readily available for use with HVAC, it is possible that wireless sensing will become just as prevalent in corporate and public spaces as Wi-Fi internet is today.” A BACnet JACE control unit from Tridium was installed as part of the project to ensure the sensors ran smoothly with rest of the BMS. By using one communication protocol, the readings from the SonNet system can be combined with other applications in the BMS to improve energy efficiency and indoor air quality. The information is logged into the system with the data used to alter the energy being used by each component.
www.sontay.com
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