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Testing of environmental heating and cooling systems
As part of designing your new hospital, we’re exploring a sustainable way to heat and cool the building.
We’re currently carrying out tests to see if we can use an open loop ground source heat pump system. This technology uses the natural, steady temperature of groundwater to provide low-carbon heating in winter and cooling in summer.
The system works by drawing water from deep underground from something called an aquifer. The water flows through a heat exchanger, where it either gives off heat (to warm the building) or absorbs heat (to cool it down). The water is then returned to the ground, completing the loop.
This type of heating and cooling system is very efficient, but it only works if there’s a suitable water source. Our development site, in Bury St Edmunds, sits above a major aquifer so we’re drilling two test boreholes, one to extract water and one to return in, on both our Hardwick Manor development site and our adjacent existing site, to see if this is a viable solution for our new hospital.
We’ve started this work with specialist contractors and with permission from the Environment Agency.
Each borehole goes to around 110 metres deep, and once drilled, we install a pump and run a test. We measure how the aquifer responds to the pumping which gives us vital data on how much water it can supply and how well the system might perform.
If the tests are successful, this clean, green technology could become part of the final hospital design, helping us create a sustainable hospital for West Suffolk which supports the NHS’s commitment to Net Zero.
To keep up to date on all the developments regarding the new hospital you can register for the new West Suffolk Hospital newsletter
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