Hollywood House is a 1980’s five story building which was dated and expensive to run for the main tenant Skanska Rashleigh Weatherfoil. When the lease was up for renewal, Skanska proposed to the landlord Prupim to refurbish the building to maximise its energy performance.
In 2011, the decision was taken to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment of the building to create a highly sustainable workplace that was designed to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Commercial Interiors Platinum certification.
The refurbishment of the 1,574m2 of office building took 32 weeks to complete and involved the installation of new heating, lighting, ventilation and energy management systems, and the incorporation of raised floors and suspended ceilings.
A major part of these works included connecting the building to ThamesWey’s heating and power network in the town centre. Both Prupim and Skanska worked closely with ThamesWey Energy to calculate the cost benefit of these connections.
The building’s existing gas boilers were replaced with a new plant room that sources efficient and low-carbon district heating from the Woking Town Centre Energy Station. The energy station has a 1.4 MWe Combined Heating and Power plant (CHP) that now provides Hollywood House with low-carbon heating, hot water and electricity from the heating and the private wire network.
Hollywood House was the first commercial office building in Woking to be retrofitted to the energy station and provides an exemplar of co-ordinating a major refurbishment scheme with connection to the district heat and private wire networks. The building uses individu- ally zoned areas for heat distribution via sensors and radiator con- trol valves to optimise low return temperatures to the heat network whilst achieving comfortable average temperatures throughout the building.
In 2011 Hollywood House achieved a 32% CO2 emissions saving compared to grid electricity which significantly helped Skanska towards their efficiency targets. Additionally by connecting the building to the heating network Hollywood house gained an extra 11% CO2 emissions reduction while also removing the need for on-site gas fired boilers.