Community leisure centres create a vital opportunity to boost wellbeing and encourage a healthy lifestyle, offering facilities for exercise, mindfulness, recreation, and socialising. The design of these buildings offers a real opportunity to focus on a ‘just transition’ towards inclusive net zero, where reduced energy demand, and a focus on ethical material selection, develop in parallel with measures to create an equitable society, and inclusive public buildings. 

Holmes Miller are at the forefront of Sports architecture, focussing on the creation of sustainable, enriching and accessible architecture. With the government move to Net Zero Carbon by 2050, and local authorities committing to more onerous targets, our designs are embracing increasingly higher standards of sustainable design.

Collaboration with the Passivhaus Institute We are addressing operational energy within our leisure centres, to derive standards and certification requirements, and allow us to deliver one of the UK’s first Passivhaus accredited Sports Centres. There are currently only two accredited Passivhaus swimming pools in the world, and our team, working directly with the Passivhaus Institute (PHI) in Germany, are researching the relevant criteria to achieve the most efficient design. This bespoke approach takes account of the Client’s brief, the local climate and prevailing weather conditions to set the best targets and apply Passivhaus design principles to our specific site.

Passivhaus principles To achieve the optimum design, a daylighting strategy has been used to determine the best position and orientation of the building on site and the position and area of glazing, to maximise useful solar gain and reduce heating and lighting costs. The building’s form factor, which is a result of calculating the ratio of the external surface area to the floor area, has been designed to be low as this will help to minimise heat loss. The target thermal values to achieve the Passivhaus standard are significant improvements on those that would typically be required by current Building Regulations guidance, or even the more onerous Sport England targets.

Swimming pools + air quality The Passivhaus strategy for our pool hall design is to maximise thermal insulation and airtightness, using high efficiency glazing systems and eradicating thermal bridging, while harnessing mechanical ventilation systems to recover waste heat. The highly efficient building envelope reduces the risk of condensation which in turn means that recirculation of air is not required, reducing the requirement for Air Handling Units and so electricity use.

The pool water treatment and cleaning system represents a significant energy load and the solution must be carefully selected to ensure the best energy efficiency. A Chlorine Free - Micro-filtration System has therefore been selected in this case. This uses less energy and water and brings improved air quality leading to health and wellness benefits over other options.

The result of this design, is a swimming pool that is cost effective in operation, demands a reduced energy load for ventilation and heating, and through mitigation of pool chlorine, delivers an environment with minimal chemical and VOC pollutants in the atmosphere, bringing health and performance benefits to all users.

Recognising thermal zones As with most Sports Centres, the pool hall will be heated to a higher temperature (circa 29°C) than the other spaces such as Sports Halls, Gymnasia and reception spaces.  Thermal separation of zones is therefore essential and internal walls forming high temperature zones will be thermally insulated to achieve a u-value of 0.2 W/m²k.

This principle will also be applied to the ventilation of each zone which will have different set point temperatures, maximum temperatures, dehumidification demand, operating hours and variations in use patterns. In some zones, passive night cooling will be utilised for cooling down. By following this passive ventilation strategy electricity use and heat loads will be reduced.

In indoor swimming pools a high heating demand arises for hot water for showers. The planning of spaces and their interrelationships are critical to managing this. Therefore, rooms should be positioned so that hot water pipe runs are minimised, with water heating plant designed to be next to Changing Rooms and close to the pool entrance point. The use of water-saving fittings that close automatically will reduce energy and water use, bringing further cost savings.

Heat recovery from shower wastewater also offers significant energy savings. The high wastewater temperature of around 35°C and the abundant availability, create opportunities to achieve considerable savings with simple passive heat recovery measures.

Working with us Our sports team are assisting local authorities, private clubs and organisations across the UK, as they begin to address the climate emergency and work towards Net Zero. The experience that our designers provide however, forges the link between improved building efficiency, and enhanced environments for building users. The transition towards carbon neutrality needs to bring change in the procurement of leisure buildings, to ensure these vital facilities remain affordable, whilst retaining their position at the heart of our communities.

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