The new 3 storey headquarters for Bosch Australia is located on the existing Bosch campus at 1555 Centre Road, Clayton, Victoria. The ground floor has a rectangular floor plan, whereas the first and second floors have an L-shaped plan, with parts of the second floor cantilevered over the first floor. A roof terrace area can be accessed from the first floor. The total floor area is 10,230m2.
The HVAC system consists of a central heating hot water and chilled water plant to supply heating and cooling to water coils located within the roof-mounted air handling units.
Gas fired condensing boilers with one large 480kW boiler and four smaller Bosch GB162 100 kW wall mounted cascade boilers were specified. Each boiler has an efficiency of 93%.
Two York Air Cooled Screw Chillers each with a 600kW capacity were specified.
The air handling and distribution system was proposed to utilise the Bauer Optimisation System (BAOPT) with five air handling units serving the building. Two units serve the office areas with dedicated individual air handling units to be provided to serve the training rooms, cafeteria and kitchen area. The Bauer system is a product owned Bosch, hence its adoption for this building.
Each zone will be provided with branch ducts connected to 1/3 and 2/3 supply ducts with control provided by motorized dampers. This will provide continuous outside air ventilation to the building even when heating and cooling is not required.
Outside air economy cycles are capable of providing up to 100% outside air. VSD allowances have been made on the 1/3 and 2/3 supply duct air fans and the return air fans based on the heating and cooling load profiles of the building.
Heat recovery is used to pre-heat/pre-cool the outside air through air-to-air heat exchange with the return air. Thermal heat recovery wheels have been proposed on the minimum outside air at 75% efficiency.
Daylight dimming controls are predicted to deliver 13% energy by linearly reducing the artificial lighting demands from 100% to 50% proportionate to the daylight availability. This energy reduction translates into annual savings of ~$6,300 based on an electricity rate of $0.28/kWh.
The building was also designed to be very airtight. The building was ‘blower door tested’ before handover and a permeability of 2.352 m3/hr·m2 was achieved, which was the lowest (best) result achieved on a large commercial building that ‘Efficiency Matrix’ the testers had yet seen in Australia.