The Sackville Town Hall opened in March, 2012. The new facility will house the Town Hall, Emergency Services, and the local RCMP detachment. These three municipal services were previously housed under multiple roofs, and the new Town Hall building brings them all together for increased efficiency and convenience for the public.
The building consists of three parts. The RCMP portion of the building will include three interview rooms, three jail cells, a monitor room, an exhibit area, storage, a kitchen, operational rooms and a shared meeting room. Many of these areas where not available in the previous building used by the RCMP, requiring them to travel to Shediac or Amherst to access those services. The RCMP have entered into a twenty-five year lease agreement with the town, helping to reduce the cost of the building. The new building also allows greater collaboration between the two detachments that police the town.
The fire station portion of the building features drive-through bays for the fire trucks, shower and washer/dryer facilities, washrooms, storage, a workshop area, gear racks, a multi-purpose room, a kitchen and a bar area.
The third section of the building is the town hall section. This section includes a spacious main lobby, offices, a board room, a kitchen, storage areas, and a state of the art council chamber.
The true genius in the building is the way it was constructed. The facility received a $1 million grant from the Green Municipal Fund due to its innovative design and commitment to environmental stewardship. The building exceeds the model national energy code by sixty per cent, and is has achieved LEED silver certification.
This was achieved through a multitude of technologies including a green roof and deck, walking paths, geothermal heating, in-slab heating distribution, daylight sensing dimming light fixtures, occupancy sensors to control HVAC and lighting, a computer control system, and hydration stations for staff to fill up water bottles.
The star performer for the LEED certification was by far the three NORDIC® Commercial water to water geothermal units. The geothermal units were used in a simultaneous heating and cooling system, which is the most efficient way to heating and cool large buildings.
The simultaneous heating and cooling system consists of multiple heat pumps connected in parallel between a hot and a cold buffer tank. The hot buffer tank connects the heating zones and the indoor side of the heat pumps. The cold buffer tank connects the cooling zones and the outdoor side of the heat pump. Each of the buffer tanks is also connected to the ground loop via three-way valves so that only one tank is connected to the ground loop at time. The heat pumps absorb heat from the cold buffer tank and reject this heat along with the compressor energy to the hot buffer tank. The hot buffer tank has an upper limit activation point. Should the hot buffer tank temperature exceed this value the three-way valves will connect the hot buffer tank to the ground loop in order to cool down the tank to a preset value below the upper limit activation point. The cold buffer tank has a lower limit activation point. Should the cold buffer tank temperature exceed this value the three-way valves will connect the cold buffer tank to the ground loop in order to warm up the tank to a preset value above the lower limit activation point.
This system allows both heating and cooling to take place at the same time with heating only units by taking advantage of both sides of the heat pumps, virtually doubling the efficiency of the system compared to a conventional reversing heat pump system. An extra benefit of this system it that under balanced load conditions it allows heat to be removed from locations of the building that require cooling and placed in locations of the building that require heating without the use of the ground loop, eliminating the need to operate the ground loop circulators, thereby further increasing efficiency.
Each NORDIC® Commercial water to water unit is equipped with a desuperheater to help provide hot water for domestic use.
By using this sophisticated system to provide the heating and cooling requirements for the building, the Sackville Town Hall was able to achieve LEED silver certification, provide an efficient, comfortable environment for three municipal services, and make an investment in the building that will keep operating costs as low as possible for the life of the building.
“It was a lot of work and a lot of convincing some of the naysayers” said consultant Andrew Amos. “But council stayed true and recognized this was important. This is a space that works well for today and into the future.” Local MP Dominic LeBlanc agrees “This facility is certainly the envy of Atlantic Canada in what you’ve been able to accomplish,” he said “particularly in environmental stewardship.”
For more photos of the beautiful new Sackville Town Hall, visit our case study.