The Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario is an up-and-coming area for homeowners and investors looking to purchase property without the sky-high prices of Toronto. With many new-build houses and condos planned and on the market, new residential developments need to stand out to compete. One of these communities is Victoria Common, by Queensgate Developments (Kitchener) Inc. When complete, it will include five mid-rise condo buildings with over 990 residential suites.

To remain competitive, the condos are contemporary in design with a brick, steel and glass façade. All units include patios, balconies or terraces. Sam DeCaria, President of Anew Building Corp., explains that energy-and cost-savings for the developer and for end-users were also very important. The option of using a geothermal district energy system, which offers 30% energy-savings when compared to other systems, was very attractive. Queensgate wanted to build a single geothermal system that would work for all five buildings to provide better energy efficiency and redundancy, ensuring that no one building could ever be without heating or cooling.

Queensgate needed a highefficiency HVAC system that could connect to the geothermal system and reliably carry heating and cooling to each suite with the highest level of comfort and control. They chose Mitsubishi Electric’s City Multi VRF (Variable Refrigerant Flow) Water-Source Heat Recovery systems. The VRF systems recover energy from zones on each floor of a building before drawing energy from the geothermal field – this means it can draw heat from a part of the building that needs cooling and transfer it to an area that needs heating.

For example, west-facing areas can become hot in any season from sunlight streaming in. A traditional heating and cooling system would have to waste energy cooling the west side while at the same time warming up the east side. Instead, a VRF heat recovery system takes heat from the west and redistributes it to the east, balancing the temperature across each floor before going to the condensers and geothermal energy source.

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is sustainable, renewable, reliable, low maintenance and durable, with ground loops lasting up to one hundred years. A geothermal system channels solar energy naturally stored in the earth, delivering heat when needed and providing a heat sink when cooling is required. Essentially, the ground acts like a bank of energy: some energy is deposited and some is borrowed. At Victoria Common, a series of boreholes were drilled into the ground under the parking garage of building A, where a system of geothermal pipes 17,920 feet in length was installed in an underground supply and return network. Fluid, tempered as it flows through the ground loop, is delivered to headers inside the building parking garage. A similar system of geothermal pipes was installed under the parking garage of building B as it will be under buildings C, D and E as they are built.

Variable Refrigerant Flow Heat Recovery Systems

Mitsubishi Electric’s City Multi VRF Water-Source Heat Recovery Systems, coupled to the geothermal system, continuously take or reject heat as required by the building. Central VRF condensing units use little electricity to exchange the water-source heat with environmentally friendly refrigerant. This adds a second layer of energy efficiency, in that refrigerant evaporates at a much lower temperature than water and the gas can be highly compressed, storing large volumes of energy in a small volume of gas. Variable drive motors send exactly the amount of refrigerant required to heat or cool the building through two very small diameter pipes to Branch Control units centrally located on each floor of the building. Each Branch Controller is then connected by two small refrigerant pipes to up to 16 low-sound fan coil units concealed in the ceiling or walls in individual suites, each with their own fully controllable thermostats, simultaneously providing heating and cooling.The heat recovery capability of the system provides a third layer of energy efficiency, as it extracts heat from suites requiring air conditioning and circulates it to suites requiring heating before it calls for more energy from the central compressors. Energy efficiency is created by reusing energy by moving it around, before consuming electricity to create more. The geothermal/water-source heat recovery VRF system has three ways to simultaneously move and reuse energy: in the ground, in the central condenser loop and in each branch control loop. Typical COP values range 4 to 5 during heating mode, 5 to 7 during cooling mode and 6 to11 during the spring and fall, when it is in simultaneous heating/ cooling mode. The integration of a geothermal system and VRF heat recovery technology will provide the residents of Victoria Common with renewable, efficient, cost-effective, carbon-free and sustainable energy for many years to come.