Natural Ventilation at the University of Birmingham School of Engineering

State-of-the-art natural ventilation at a state-of-the-art learning facility. Project: The School of Engineering building at the University of Birmingham is a brand new state-of-the-art 12,000 sqm facility, spanning across five floors featuring a double-height atrium. The 46.5M development brings together many engineering disciplines from across the University. The building’s contemporary and flexible design enables collaborative working between academics, researchers, students and staff. System: Dyer provided natural ventilation within offices and meeting rooms around the facility. Dyer supplied and installed a total of 98 intelligent CDC chain drives, one per window: 74 of these drives are concealed within the frames of bottom hung open inward windows, with specially manufactured flexible chains to allow the sash to open without clashing with the chain. 24 drives are surface mounted, operating top hung outward opening windows, with a larger opening stroke. Advanced Communication Bus (ACB) allows our D+H drives to communicate with the BMS directly via Modbus without additional control panels, which provides true feedback on their opening and conditions. It significantly reduces wiring, installation effort and costs, and makes it possible to specify direct control of the drives down to the millimetre. Brackets and drives were powder coated to match the window framework, providing a seamless finish.