Sports Hall Cooling

St Stephens College, Gold Coast, QLD.

St Stephens College, a leading private school on the Gold Coast in Queensland, had a significant summer overheating problem in their large basketball hall.

Four large bladed fans had been specified as a cooling option and St Stephens College approached Airius Oceania to see if they could provide a more aesthetic, simple to install and cost effective solution to cooling via air movement in the hall. Airius could satisfy the customer on all counts.

SPORTS HALL COOLING PROBLEM:

School and community sports centres are large spaces and in the Australian climate often have issues with overheating in summer.

Current solutions are limited to:

• Air Conditioning – high capital expense and running costs
• Large blade fans – expensive installation, aesthetics, structural issues, height restrictions, risk of damage from users, light strobing.

The use of air movement for cooling by moving the air across the skin and causing evaporation has been used for centuries in all sorts of tropical and temperate climates.  It is a cost-effective solution to the overheating problem.

In 2015, St Stephen’s College’s Director of Sport, Rob Reib, approached Airius Oceania P/L to provide a proposal to supply Airius Air Pears as an alternative to large bladed fans.

The two basketball courts were in a relatively new building with high roofs around 10 metres high and around 1400 sq metres in size. Located in a sub-tropical climate, high summer and moderate winter temperatures combined with high humidity are typical for the area.

The building design has limited capacity for cross flow ventilation and suffered from severe overheating in spring and summer. The building is used for both sports and classes and the overheating impacted negatively on both sports performance and learning outcomes.

SPORTS HALL COOLING PRODUCT:

Airius supplied 12 x Model 60 Airius Air Pear Series units with two five amp SC-05 speed controllers for an installed cost of around 15% cheaper and with greater floor coverage than the alternative large bladed fans.

As a bonus the units are very quiet and are adjustable in any direction to enable the customer to direct the air flow to where it may be required.

SPORTS HALL COOLING OUTCOME:

At 10 metres high these unobtrusive and quiet units provide a large amount of air flow all across the space. Full speed control capability is offered in five steps from 0-100%.

The improvement in comfort inside the space was instant and the customer indicated that even in the warmest days in the Gold Coast summer the air movement offers cooling and has made the space much more comfortable and usable.