SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGNBACHELOR OF QUANTITY SURVEYING (HONOURS)

QSB2414 – Building Services II

Time Management

April Semester 2014

Building Services II Case Study Report

Submission Date: 26th June 2013

Name Student ID

Yam Yih Hwan 0305861

Low Rong Tzuoo 0304924

Ng Jun Keat 0314368

Dixon Cheong 0310356

Adrian Ng Kar Chun 0314516

Wong Ha Shiong

Table of Content Page

Cover Page 1

Table of Content 2

Introduction 3

Mechanical & Air-Conditioning Systems 4 - 9

Fire Protection in the Buildings 10 - 14

Problems on Fire Protection 15 - 17

Vertical Transportation System 18 - 19

Problems on Vertical Transportation System 20

Electricity Supply Systems 21 - 22

Recommendations regarding on the Problems 23

Conclusion 24

Appendix 25

Introduction

Building service is one of a crucial role in a building because it helps a

building to function well. Building service is responsible for the design, installation,

and operation and monitoring of the mechanical, electrical and public health systems

required for the safe, comfortable and environmentally friendly operation of modern

buildings. Modern technology of building service can make a building to become

more safety or more comfortable for visitors of the building. While building

developers are increasingly being asked to analyze and improve building security,

developing technologies assisting engineers in the pursuit of safe working

environments couldn't have better timing. Hence, innovation of new building service

is important so that the level of safety and comfortable can be increases. Building

services influence the architecture of a building and play a significant role on the

sustainability and energy demand of a building.

Recently, we had chosen The Summit located at Subang Jaya, USJ as our

case study, a study to locate all the services within the building. The purpose of us

choosing The Summit as our case study is because The Summit used to be popular

place for youngster & families back in old days, but nowadays it became less and

less popular due to the poor management of the building.

Mechanical & Air-conditioning Systems

First of all, ventilation is the process of replacing the air in an enclosed space

with new and fresh air. It includes extraction and supply of air through mechanical or

natural ventilation. The purpose of ventilation is to control temperature and moisture

and maintain the freshness of the air. Natural ventilation means ventilation without

the mechanical help. It can be achieved by the design of the building layout and

openings with stack effect. Mechanical ventilation uses fans or air conditioning units

to achieve ventilation.

During our visit to The Summit, we found out that both natural and mechanical

systems of ventilation are implemented. In the washrooms, there are 3 openings of

windows to provide ventilation. There is also a fan blower inside, which is of the

mechanical system.

In Malaysia where the climate is hot, air conditioning is very important

especially in a shopping complex such as The Summit. So air doors are installed at

every automatic sliding door at The Summit to prevent loss of cool air and prevent

hot air from coming in. Condensers are normally located around the basement level

or the rooftop.

In the main area or lobby of the building, centralized system and air-

conditioning is installed. With this system, fresh or cold air is transfer through ducting

to various part of the building.

The cooling tower is located at the top of the building, along with other

services, for examples; piping, split units & electrical distributor.

Diffusers are where the air comes out and is discharged into the rooms. In

The Summit, we found out 3 types of diffusers that are installed.

The first one is linear diffuser. It is used in open plan rooms and it will hardly

interfere with the pattern of the ceiling. Its direction of air discharge can be changed

to suit the room conditions. It is suitable with high air velocity and it has high

induction slot can have rapid decay of air velocity and temperature.

The second one is the cone diffuser. Its shape can sometimes be square to

match pattern of the ceiling and its inner cone can be lowered or raised to result in

different flow pattern.

The third type of diffuser is the side wall inlet diffuser. It is used when there is

no false ceiling. For every inlet there will be a grill. The air discharge can be

controlled by sets of louvers in vertical or horizontal plane. The flow pattern can be

varied according to room size, velocity and aspect ratio.

Fire Protections in Building

There are two different methods of fire protection, which are passive fire

protection and active fire protection. Active fire protection method requires

mechanical, electric or electronic activation. It is the manual or automatic fire

protection systems such as fire alarms, detectors, wet and dry risers, hose reels,

carbon dioxide fixed installation.

One of the active fire protection systems that we have stumble upon in this

building is fire extinguisher. There are four different types of fire extinguishers, which

are water type, foam type, dry powder type and carbon dioxide. One way to indicate

what type of fire extinguisher is by looking at the colour the fire extinguisher. For

instance, the water type fire extinguisher is red in colour, the foam type fire

extinguisher is yellow in colour, the dry powder fire extinguisher is blue in colour, and

the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is black in colour.

The types of fire extinguisher that we have found during our survey of the

building are ABC powder fire extinguisher and carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. In

this building, the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is used more often compared to the

ABC fire extinguisher. There are 18 carbon dioxide fire extinguishers and 9 ABC

powder fire extinguishers on every floor. One of the reasons why there are more

carbon dioxide fire extinguishers is because there are a lot of small restaurants or

hawker stalls. Besides that, the carbon dioxide fire extinguishers are located near the

escape routes, staircase, elevators and cinemas, and the ABC powder fire

extinguishers are located at the center of the building and near the escalators.

The other active fire protection system is hose reel. In this building, there are

nine hose reel located at every escape routes (staircase) on every floor. The hose

reel is made of rubber; it is 19mm diameter and 25m in length. Other than that, the

sprinkler system is also another active fire system that is used in this building. The

sprinklers are fixed at 1m away from each other. Based on what we have learned,

we assumed that they used wet system. This is so, because Malaysia is a tropical

country and there are no risks of freezing. It is also equipped with control valve to

deliver the pressure of the sprinkler water.

In this building, 2 types of fire alarm systems were installed, which are

automatic and manual fire alarms. For the automatic alarm system, it automatically

initiates and activates the alarm when it detects fire. Whereas the manual alarm

system only provides an alarm to be activated only when it is switch on by someone.

An example of an automatic fire alarm system is the fire detection system. There are

many different types of detectors that can be used to automatically activate the alarm

when there is an occurrence of fire. Such as, smoke detectors, heat detectors,

radiation fire detectors, and laser beam detectors, however the detector that the

building is using is smoke detector. Since Summit is a building with large premise,

there are voice communication systems installed in different parts of the building in

event of fire.

Passive fire protection method is an integral component of the structural fire

protection and fire safety in a building. This method attempts to contain fires or

preventing the fire from spreading all over the building. Examples of passive fire

protection methods are fire-resistant walls, floors, and doors and so on. These

passive systems must comply with the associated listing and approval of use in order

to provide effectiveness expected by building codes.

One of the passive fire protection systems that we found after surveying the

building is fire-resistant door. These fire-resistant doors are used mainly for fire

escape doors, which lead to the staircase and protected corridor. The staircase were

properly designed, this being said because there are 13 risers per flight. Besides

that, the dimension of the threads and risers were constructed consistently, there are

no winders built and the length of the landing is not less than the width. There are

fire-rated doors used in this building too. They are mostly located at the fire escape

exits. This is done, so that the people in the building have some time to exit the

building before it collapse in event of fire. In addition, the other passive fire protection

system is fireman lift. The fireman lift is indicated so that in case of fire, the people

will not use it, letting the fire brigade to operate it.

Problems on Fire Protections

The problem that we have found during our survey of this building was that the

fire extinguishers were not send for maintenance. Maintenance has to be done to

ensure that the extinguisher is still functional.

The other problem that we have come across was that the manual fire alarm is ‘not in

use’.

Besides that, the fire doors are not in good condition. For example, the quality is

degraded, the doorknob is missing, and the doors should always be closed and should

not be obstructed by any object.

Lastly, their voice communication systems are not in suitable conditions and not

maintenance were carried out.

Vertical Transportation Systems

The differences between hydraulic and electric lifts are electrical lift driven by AC

or DC electric motors. Electrical lift use worm gears to control mechanical movement of

elevator cars by "rolling" steel hoist ropes over a drive sheave which is attached to a

gearbox driven by a high-speed motor. These machines are generally the best option for

basement or overhead traction use for speeds up to 500 feet per minute (3 m/s). The

hydraulic lift in comparison to electrical lift makes them ideal for low rise, low traffic

installations.

They are less energy efficient as the pump works against gravity to push the car

and its passengers upwards; this energy is lost when the car descends on its own

weight. The high current draw of the pump when starting up also places higher demands

on a building’s electrical system. There are also environmental concerns should either

the lifting cylinder leak fluid into the ground. The modern generation of low cost,

machine room-less electrical life made possible by advances in miniaturization of the

traction motor and control systems challenges the supremacy of the hydraulic lift in their

traditional market niche.

These days there are few advantages to hydraulic lifts other than price. Hydraulic

lifts are inherently dangerous because if there is a catastrophic oil line failure the

elevator will drop uncontrolled. Hydraulic lifts are limited to about 6 or 7 floors max.

Changing the rated speed would require a complete replacement or re-engineering of

the pump unit. The hydraulic lifts are nature more eco-friendly.

The population of Summit mall is around 5000. Area of The Summit mall is about

1.2 million square feet; it is a commercial building consists of 9 floors included

basements. There is only one bus stop in front of The Summit; The Summit is poor in

position of building in relation to public transport services, which means it has low

passenger peaks during arrival hours.

Escalator is a conveyor transport designed for moving people quickly and

efficiently between floors of a building. There are two types of escalator in The Summit

which are one way traffic of single bank with interrupted traffic in one direction on every

floor and two-way traffic parallel located in the cinema.

Problems on Vertical Transportation Systems

In The Summit, the lift car capacity is 20 passengers, life entrances is 1160mm

wide with 2 pieces of doors, door closing time is 50 seconds for 1160mm width doors

and passenger transfer time is 50 seconds in and out. It’s ridiculously slow compared to

other places. The lift arrangement consists of only one lift for 9 floors including

basement levels and the quality of the service is below average.

Moreover, we found that there are few problems of the vertical transportation in

The Summit. There are 5 passenger and 6 fire’s man lifts on every floor, but we realized

that there is only one passenger lift working among all. Most likely, the shoppers use the

fire’s man lift to travel from 1 floor to the other. The Summit used hydraulic lifts, it

supposed to be low vibration and noise, but we found that it causes a lot of vibration and

noise; we assumed that it has less maintenance on the vertical transportation.

Electricity Supply Systems

The main switch boards are located around the building examples are at the rooftop, at the ground floor and the basement parking. The pictures above show the different location of the main switch board. The function of the main switch board act as a assembly of switches and circuit protection devices from which power is distributed. It is totally enclosed, sheet steel fabricated. It also distributes large incoming supply into smaller, easily controlled parcel. One of the more mutual configurations for an electric switchboard is a series of interconnected electrical panels. Each of the panels in turn features a series of switches that make it possible to control the flow of electricity. Making use of the switches, it is possible to adjust the voltage that is transmitted to connected devices, ensuring that the flow is not sufficient to cause damage to the circuitry. From this perspective, we can see that the electric switchboard can be viewed as a way of enhancing the safety of using electricity in the operation of various appliances, machinery, and other devices.

Recommendations regarding on the Problems

We would like to recommend an external fire hydrant for The Summit because the

nearest fire hydrant we could found was located at The Giant. Every building must have

at least 1 fire hydrant located not more than 91.5 meters from the nearest point of fire

breakage access. The closest fire hydrant is located at giant which is 51 meters away, a

good one should be 6 meter away. For commercial buildings, the 19mm hose reel

diameter is not good enough as it pump out lesser water; we would recommend a 25mm

diameter hose reel. As for the hose reel length, The Summit uses the 25 meter in total

length; but we would the recommended the 30 meters length as it could cover a larger

area compared to 25 meters. The fire detection system found in The Summit is smoke

detector and I would like to recommend heat detector, because heat detector respond

when the converted thermal energy of a fire increases the temperature of a heat

sensitive element. The number of detectors fitted should not be less than 1 in 50 meter

square. For flat horizontal ceiling, every point should not exceed 5.3 meter. The

fireman’s lift passenger transfer time is too long; normally it should be 1.6 – 2.0 s in and

out.

We highly recommend an electrical elevator for The Summit. There are two types

of driving systems for rope-type elevators include drum method and traction method.

The drum method uses a variable speed motor that winds the cable onto a drum and

then on descent allows the car to use its weight to help with lowering. Traction method is

when the elevator cars are pulled up by means of rolling steel ropes over a deeply

grooved pulley, the weight of the car is balanced by a counterweight. The traction

method includes two types which is geared and gearless. Geared means the motor

rotation is reduced using a speed reducer equipped with worm and transmitted to the

traction sheave of the traction machine. Gearless means the traction sheaves is

connected directly to the shaft of the traction motor, and motor rotation is transmitted

directly to the traction sheave without any intermediate gearing. The main advantages of

traction elevators are speed and availability for high-rise use, consume less energy than

hydraulic elevators.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is no doubt that building services is vital in a building.

Building services is ‘what makes a building alive’ so everything inside of a building which

make it safe and comfortable comes under the title of ‘building services’. Without

building services, we won’t have lighting, heat, escalator, lift, acoustics, plumbing, power

supply, the security and safety system in a building so without all this it will only be a

cold, dark and uninhabitable building.

Since we are on the subject of building services, Summit’s building services is not

what we expected because many of the safety system are spoiled and are poorly

maintained. Examples are the emergency phone and the fire escape door which is

allocated near the stairs. Not only that, many of the lifts in The Summit are not

functioning causing the peoples to use both the stairs and escalator only. The population

in summit is lesser compared to other shopping complex like mid valley Megamall,

Subang Parade or 1 Utama. So after the research, we hope the owner of summit will

take the responsibilities to improve and maintain the services in the building to secure a

safe and comfortable environment for the shoppers and the workers which work in the

building for several hours. Our first impression of the building is that It is dull and dark

so by improving its lighting to be more brighter and also by adding some decoration it

can attract more shoppers to shop in this building.

So lastly, my group and I had learned a lot stuff through this project, many new

experience and most importantly we’ve learn to work as a team because by working as

a team, we can accomplish goals.

Appendix

Work Schedule