The Edmundston Police Station was built in 2011 to replace the aging building the police for had been located in. This $10 million facility houses the Edmundston Police Department in one wing and commercial space in another. The building was designed by DFS Architecture Inc. and is LEED© Silver certified as a green building.
The police station has many green features incorporated into the design including low-flow water fixtures, a low-albedo roof, and geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling. The building was also built using recycled material whenever possible and the construction company used waste management protocols to reduce construction waste.
The Edmundston Police Station is heated and cooled by four W-150 commercial geothermal heat pumps with R407c refrigerant. These units are fully reversible and provide heating and cooling for the building, as well as a portion of the building’s domestic hot water requirement. The units are compact and are stacked two high via racking with each pair side by side. There is a hot water buffer tank as well as a cold water buffer tank in this system. There are motorized valves to select the proper tank based on whether the system is in heating or cooling mode.
These heat pumps are configured with separate heating and cooling systems, which are selected by motorized valves depending on what is required in the building. When in heating mode, heat is extracted from the ground loop and rejected into the hot buffer tank. In this mode, the valves connect the indoor side of the commercial geothermal heat pumps to the hot buffer tank. The distribution system for this building is radiant in-floor heating, configured in zones.
When cooling mode is required, the cold buffer tank is accessible, and cooling is done via fan coil units. When in cooling mode, the geothermal heat pumps extract heat from the cold buffer tank and reject it into the energy supply source, in this case, a vertical geothermal ground loop.
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