More than earth is being broken at the two-tower Lillian Park development now under construction in midtown Toronto.
Developer attitudes about the possibilities of installing geothermal heating and cooling systems in dense urban settings may also be giving way.
But it’s not just the location of Lillian Park in the Yonge Street/Eglinton Avenue neighbourhood that makes this project unique from a geothermal perspective.
Not only will the system service the side-by-side rental towers, which will be 25 and 26 storeys respectively and house a total of 560 units, it will also provide heating, cooling, and ventilation to an existing 177-unit retirement residence on the same property.
The timing of the drilling also differentiates the project from most other geothermal operations, says Tim Weber, co-founding partner of Diverso Energy, a Waterloo, Ont.-based geothermal utility company.
Usually, geothermal systems are installed at or near the very first stage of construction because of the large unencumbered land mass required for the bore holes. In this particular project, excavation and shoring had been completed by the time Diverso was engaged, “eliminating the possibility of predrilling.”
A corporate decision by Shiplake Properties, which has owned the site for decades, and its development manager Collecdev, to include geothermal was the reason.
“We have a good relationship with them,” says Weber, in explaining why his company accepted the project despite the site constraints and late start. It had previously installed a geothermal system at Collecdev’s own 15-storey Westwood Gardens complex in Richmond Hill.
Drilling contractor GeoSource Energy Inc. came onsite last August and had to contend with more than a few hurdles. The pipes are only about 0.6 metres (two feet) apart at the ground entry point compared to a standard 4.5 to six metres (15 to 20 feet).
There is also not a lot of manoeuvering room and the traditional horizontal installation procedure over a large area is not feasible, he explains.
In what Weber describes as “precision angle drilling” the first phase of 60, 259-metre-deep (850 feet) bore holes are being “feathered” into the ground on a slight angle from a very small staging area on the east side of the property. Each hole has its own angle and GeoSource has to be careful it’s drilling doesn’t extend beyond the Shiplake property.
Later this spring the drilling will switch to the west side of the Shiplake lands and two drilling machines will be used to install an additional 60 holes.
But the staging area will be just as constricted and the contractor will have to take precautions not to impact a nearby stand of trees.
Touching on why the system will also connect with the retirement home, Weber explains that its cooling tower will help augment the system and that the integration with the building will be fairly seamless.
“Each suite is equipped with a heat pump which is common to geothermal,” he says.
Construction at Lillian Park started in the fall of 2017 and is slated for completion in late 2019, says Collecdev’s vice-president of construction, Jennifer Burstein. Deltera Inc. is the construction manager.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed