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Met Office - Water Feature

The Meteorological Office has been re-located from Bracknell to new offices at Exeter. Broadway Malyan worked with Ocmis to develop a workable scheme for a feature stream to flow through the central Atrium area of the office development. The overall concept of the stream was for it to appear at the West entrance to the building, flow through the main concourse and exit at the East end.

The source at the West entrance is a pool with three foam effect Oase Cascade 90T nozzles bubbling to a height of 600mm. The water flows along a 20m section of stream by the entrance path and appears to flow through the glass wall and continue inside the building.

The stream is geometric to give a modern feel and flows through the building quite slowly, with the flow disturbed by slate obstructions to create movement. The 70metres of stream in the building is separated into four sections, with a weir on the middle section. At the East end of the building the water again appears to flow through the glass wall and continue alongside the entrance, finishing in a pool at the extreme eastern end.

A below-ground plant room near the East entrance operates the feature. This arrangement enabled the overflow and automatic recharge of the system to be centralised, and the use of one treatment plant for the whole system. The plant room is combined with a 7000 litre below-ground storage tank, built by Condor to suit the Ocmis design. To control costs the size of the plant room was important. Ocmis used the 3D facility in AutoCAD 2004 to design the layout of the plant room and ensure the equipment would fit and could be maintained. The positioning of the connections and levels for the plant room was critical, to accommodate the drainage from the water feature with the minimum fall.

The plant room is a confined spaces environment and is serviced by Ocmis trained engineers. Remote sensing is fitted to enable the feature to be controlled and monitored from the central Building Management System.

The plant room equipment includes a 16” sand filter to treat 5000litres per hour, and an Ozonator. The water pH and disinfectant levels are constantly monitored and adjusted automatically. A Lowara dry mounted end suction pump provides the flow for the system, and the air quality and temperature in the plant room is maintained with a ventilation system

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