Figure 7.26. Swimming pool

ground level. This naturally keeps the temperature in moderate levels. Then they have introduced fresh air through earth air tunnels which cools the indoor sports arena. This way they are cooling these areas with 100% fresh air through earth air without any use of chilled water. Thus, absolutely no load on the HVAC system.

Like the indoor sports arena, the swimming pools are also constructed in the lower ground floor about 3m below the ground. Since these pools are heated for all weather use, this placement, to a good extent, naturally takes care of the temperature of the water.

• Pool heating: For the winter heating instead of going in for boilers they have gone for energy efficient heat pumps. Further during non-operational hours pool is covered • Pool ventilation: out of the air with which indoor sports arena is cooled, is directed to the swimming pool for ventilation and maintaining the humidity levels. Using this technique has saved them from putting de-humidifiers and separate ventilation system.

This has resulted in saving 310 KW of load

Source: https://www.pathways.in/aravali/aravali_green_pathways

Terraces are open to the sun heat and r5adiate a lot of heat inside. This increases the air conditioning load on the top floor of the building. Here again we go the natural way. Thay lay the brick bats over the RCC roof for insulation. This is them plastered and then on top, broken china mosaic. This reflects the heat from the sun and being of ligh6t colours do not absorb any heat either. And whatever little is left the brick bats take care of not passing through it.

The plant room has been constructed in basement adjacent to the indoor sports arena/ swimming pool. This automatically takes care of the conditions inside as the basements are always cool in summers and comfortable in winters. Further to ensure that the diesel generators run with optimum fuel consumption, their ventilation with air is utmost important. In normal cases air washers are installed in plant room to provide cool air for DG sets ventilation. Here we have achieved this without any equipment installation in following ways.

• Out of 50000 cfm air that cools the sports arena above, 42000 cfm is routed that left over the

DG sets thus taking care of the DG sets cooling. • Rest 8000 which is used for swimming pool ventilation becomes much cooler with fumes and is channelized to cool the complete plant room. • The cooling tower at the terrace though cool the condenser water but also in process throw a huge amount of cool air in the atmosphere. We have trapped this cool air going out of the cooling tower and brought it to the DG sets installation thus adding onto the DG ventilation.

By doing these measures they have done the plant room cooling and DG sets ventilation without installing any equipment but using the cool air which otherwise would have thrown away. This has resulted in saving to the tune of about 85KW of equipments which otherwise have to be installed.

Pathway campuses are huge land areas. The residential campus is 32 acres and the other two campuses are over 10 acres each. They do a ground coverage of only 22%-25% and rest of the areas are open spaces, playfields, plantations etc. thousands of trees of varied species are planted on the open areas. These plantations are strategically deployed. There is a dense plantation along the boundary walls mainly of trees that grow good height and are dense. So, any air entering the campus is filtered through these trees. Further there is dense plantation done on the periphery of all the buildings which cuts the heat and keeps the buildings cool. Regular watering of these trees creates a cooler atmosphere.

Being huge campuses ranging 32 acres to 10 acres and having huge terrace area of buildings, all the storm water is channelized into the intelligently designed storm water drain network. The network is so designed that it not only accommodates the water that comes through rain in the campus area , but also the water that flows inside the campus because of the natural terrain and nallas from surrounding areas. This network then guides water again to the natural nallas to go out of the campus. Enroute good numbers of rain water harvesting pits are built and are