Community Pavilion

Hermitage Park Pavilion Helensburgh

The community pavilion in Helensburgh, Scotland, was designed as a commercial Passivhaus project. Situated within a Victorian park, the 200m2 building houses a multi-purpose space for community gatherings, as well as an independently operated kiosk and 60-seat café. The Hermitage Park project was developed by Argyll & Bute Council with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

PAUL Heat Recovery got involved from the early planning stage through Richard Hands, who consulted on the Passivhaus performance. Our team was quite excited about the local council’s ambition to build a forward-thinking community space, which excels in its energy efficiency.

The space is ventilated by three Zehnder ComfoAir Q600 MVHR units, which are controlled by CO2 sensors and timers. The system incorporates the kitchen extraction, with integrated UV grease filters. This is a fairly innovative approach which aims at optimizing the heat retention of the building in the cold seasons. The space heating is achieved via water-to-air heating batteries within the supply ducting of the MVHR systems. Unfortunately the engineering side of the project was complicated by the M&E consultancy dropping out mid-project.