How Developers Can Integrate Design With the Natural Environment

Australian businesses and household attitudes towards water efficiency have been shaped by ongoing drought conditions, revised energy targets and a booming population over the past few decades.

Water efficiency is now an essential consideration for developers as the property industry works toward sustainability.

Areas of rapid expansion, such as south-east Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne, have set new standards for future energy and water needs of the regions.

As a result, integrating efficient design with the natural environment has become a crucial issue for developers trying to keep pace with Australia’s changing urban landscape.

Throughout this period, rainwater has remained a sustainable water supply reducing water treatment and transport costs.

Australia’s interest in sustainable water systems has led to demand from many industries for on-site stormwater management, a need that Kingspan Water and Energy has started to meet through on-site systems that reduce the peak flow and volume of stormwater.

Kingspan use state-of-the-art facilities nationwide to promote sustainable buildings, which in turn support how successfully our cities can run.

For developers, these commercial tanks can provide fire water storage, rainwater harvesting and treated water storage for the industrial, mining and agriculture sectors.

They can also efficiently manage on-site stormwater, making them a valuable asset in several major growth projects across Australia.

Water systems can be used in a variety of different project types and scopes, with tailored solutions working to suit the specific needs of each project – whether it’s commercial, residential or industrial.

Some of Kingspan’s most innovative project solutions include:

The Waverton Coal Loader

The redevelopment of the historic coal loader in Waverton was a major milestone of the Waverton Peninsula Strategic Master Plan, and in March 2018, the coal loader became one of Sydney’s largest publicly-accessible green roof spaces.

In 1997, the NSW government declared the site an open space and it now houses an extensive rooftop community garden and sustainability centre. The old coal-loading platform was redesigned as a multi-purpose recreational space with community urban harvest plots that are efficiently irrigated using recycled stormwater.

In an underground tunnel previously used to transfer coal via railway, Kingspan installed 50 Modline commercial steel tanks with a total capacity of 250,000 litres that helped transform the existing coal loader, which was operational for 72 years.

The tanks are interconnected using 50mm balance lines at the bottom of each tank, and 150mm balance lines at the top.

The tanks will be able to filter the 250,000 litres of collected stormwater from the coal loader through rain gardens that are established in the old coal loading chutes and stored in one of the old tunnels beneath the platform.

University of Queensland Clinic and Research Precinct, St Lucia

UQ’s 2017 St Lucia Campus master plan focused on providing additional services, such as child care and health support facilities, for the student population.

Currently 52,000 students are enrolled at UQ St Lucia, 3,000 of whom live on-campus.

The St Lucia campus is only 5 kilometres from Brisbane’s city centre and is one of Queensland’s fastest growing university campuses.

Enrolments and demand for student accommodation are expected to increase significantly over the long term, prompting the university to focus on incorporating sustainability into its overall design.

Part of this initiative included redeveloping the university’s clinic and research precinct.

Kingspan was asked to provide an on-site stormwater management system to manage the roof water run-off from 10 new and refurbished buildings, including the psychology clinic, and parenting and family support centre.

The system included 10 Modline water tanks in Basalt (six 5,000 litre tanks and four 7,000 litre tanks), fitted with low-level detention storage.

Mazda Distribution Centre

The Mazda distribution centre is a 5.9 hectare site in Brisbane Airport that comprises an office building, workshop, open-air car preparation shed and 1800 covered car parking spaces.

The modern facility, designed to cater for the growing business, needed rainwater harvesting to meet its water conservation requirements.

Kingspan installed 14 large tanks to harvest rainwater for essential processes such as toilet flushing, irrigation and vehicle wash-down.

The system harvests rainwater from three catchment areas, the workshop, office building and vehicle wash-down station, and helps to wash up to 100 vehicles per day by capturing, treating and reusing water over many cycles.

Each tank was built to the exact dimensions specified by the project’s designer and engineer, who required a small footprint area and roof heights of over three metres. The excellent fit was complemented by an aesthetic that successfully matched the architectural integrity of the buildings.

Kingspan Water & Energy offers a large range of water tanks for residential, business or industrial purposes. Their commercial water tanks are built to last and have become an innovative staple for sustainable projects.

For more information on on-site stormwater management, visit their website.

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