No slippery slopes here

By Tanya Olckers

A newly built luxury boutique hotel in the Cape winelands gets water system and drainage installation.

Supplied by Hazendal Hotel

Stellenbosch is a gorgeous part of the country, and the Hazendal Luxury Boutique Hotel is a venue that brings its guests timeless beauty, incomparable luxury and a touch of refinement. When it came time to create hot- and cold-water systems and drainage designs for the new building, the hotel owners knew that this would take a team that understood their needs.

Circulating pumps. Supplied by FMW

Fire Mechanical Wet Services Engineers (FMW) collaborated with Boogertman & Partners Architects and sat at the drawing board for two years creating the design of the system, which had to take into account a number of blocks of the hotel on a sloping site.

Booster pumps. Supplied by FMW

To kick the process off, many hours of conceptualisation and co-ordination took place during the initial inception stages. This ensured that the concept would work with that type of building while also ensuring that the client’s specific needs were met.

“A single central hot water generating plant had to serve all the blocks, and it was challenging to co-ordinate and create the pipe routes to the various blocks while also ensuring the system remained efficient due to long pipe runs,” says Niel Strydom, an engineer with FMW.

Along with taking the layout of the area into account, building aesthetics and the practicality of pipe routes had to be taken into consideration. Some of these pipe routes were outside of the building, and those located internally were situated within limited ceiling spaces.

“In most instances the pipes had to share routes with many other services such as electrical, data and HVAC,” says Strydom.

Supplied by Hazendal Hotel

There were constant developments to internal layouts, even during the late construction phases. This meant that equipment selected and installed would need to be optimised in the limits that existed so that the changes could be made.

Because the hotel was located on a sloping site, design workshops with the architects were held so that effective pipework routes to be mapped out. It was crucial to get this right in the early stages of design.

“The entire building – including the wet services – was placed into a 3D model, which was an accurate and true reflection of the final outcome,” says Strydom, “This greatly assisted with the co-ordination of all the services that had to share routes to the various parts of the building. It also identified potential clashes of services that could have a design and cost implication.”

The entire construction process took 18 months to complete. This included providing and installing energy efficient heat pumps that had high co-efficient of performance and an environmentally friendly refrigerant. To this end, no conventional geysers with electrical elements were used. 

Now, the Hazendal Luxury Boutique Hotel stands complete, with exceptional water systems and drainage, providing a much-needed retreat in the scenic setting of Stellenbosch.

Supplied by Hazendal Hotel