Set to open next month, the Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre will serve as New Zealand’s premier destination for community recreation, aquatic sport, and elite training.
It features a 50-metre competition pool, separate dive pool, a suite of hydroslides and leisure pools as well as multiple indoor courts, including a show court with seating for 2500 spectators. The facility is remarkable for its scale and engineering excellence, particularly when it comes to innovation, with CPB Contractors pioneering a number of ground-breaking solutions to enable sustainable future operations for the high-performance centre.
One example is Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre’s mechanical system, which harnesses renewable energy from the nearby Southern Interceptor wastewater line. Wastewater is diverted through a pump station, macerator and heat exchanger before circulating back through the wastewater line, which runs alongside the building. Energy is recovered via the exchanger into the building’s mechanical water system to meet the aquatic centre’s high heating demands. The system recovers wastewater energy to produce chilled and heating water simultaneously – delivering 60C chilled water and 50oC heating water for pool and building operations. The opportunity to reject heat from the building on long hot summer days is also available.
This approach can offset up to 3 MW of energy that would otherwise need to be generated through traditional means, reducing the carbon footprint and operating costs of the facility. The wastewater heat recovery system demonstrates practical, site-specific innovation – turning a waste stream into a reliable, renewable energy source for year-round comfort and sustainability.
The first system of its kind in New Zealand and the largest in Australasia, CPB Contractors Project Engineer, Rory Lawn worked with the project team and specialist contractors to create the purpose-built system, which significantly increases the efficiency of the aquatic facility.
“Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre is the largest facility of its kind in New Zealand, with heating required for multiple areas, including the aquatic water facilities, the internal air temperature and floor heating. This dynamic and large-scale system creates the greatest possible energy efficiency to support those requirements on the coldest days, with the system also enabled to reject heating from the building if the building’s cooling demand increases through periods in summer.”