L&T Sporthaus

L&T is one of the best shopping destinations in Osnabrück. The traditional company also offers a restaurant and a market hall with bars and bistros. The owners decided to boost the attractiveness and added value of L&T by adding a new sports store. The new building represented the largest increase in space in the company's history. Kieback & Peter had already set up intelligent building automation systems in the existing building and in the L&T logistics center some years ago, and was awarded the contract again this time. 

However, the challenges for the Osnabrück office of Kieback&Peter in this project were much greater: First, they had to integrate the heating, air conditioning, ventilation and lighting of the new building into the automation system for the existing building. Second, they needed to develop and implement a complex ventilation strategy for the “Hasewelle” area: The “standing wave” and its swimming pool in the basement of the building are open and are thus visible from galleries right up to the third floor. Therefore it was important to ensure that the humidity did not reach the sales areas. The smart automatic control system should ensure that the drive pumps for the wave can only start if the ventilation systems are working properly. The pumps move up to twelve cubic meters of water per second, which corresponds to about 120 full bathtubs. A further requirement of the control system was to integrate a third-party nitrogen enrichment system for the altitude training rooms. Office manager Hans-Heinrich Pörtner and his team remained calm in the face of the challenges - they are well trained for sporting tasks.

“Anything is possible when you have good partners on the building site,” says Pörtner. In close cooperation with the building contractors and the various trades involved, he succeeded in ensuring that all systems were integrated into the smart Kieback&Peter system in time for the opening date and that everything ran smoothly. 

At the heart of the automation solution is the Neutrino BMS building management system, which had already been implemented to control the technology in the existing buildings. The Neutrino BMS central monitoring and control software works on a server in the technical centre. The software communicates with all the building services via cabling/IP. The technical manager at L&T can now see the parameters for all system components in both the old and new buildings on his computer screen. They are visualized in an intuitive graphical user interface, which schematically displays all components and operating states. Each set point can be adjusted easily as required. If a fault occurs in the system, for example, with a chiller or a slide valve in the heating circuit, the Neutrino BMS automatically sends a text message to the building technician on duty. This guarantees quick response times, which in turn ensures a high level of operating reliability. Secure remote access enables minor faults to be diagnosed via PC immediately and from any location, allowing them to be quickly rectified.

The actual physical switching operations in the building automation system take place in the new L&T sports store in eight information centers: In these switch cabinets, which are spread throughout the entire building, Pörtner and his team have installed nine flexible DDC4200 controllers from Kieback&Peter. They communicate with the Neutrino BMS, with each other and with field devices located at 2500 physical data points. The field devices take care of the on-site work: For example, sensors measure the humidity around the pool and the temperature in the sales areas and send these values to the DDCs. Actuators carry out the control commands of the DDCs – for example, an actuating drive in the ventilation system, which directs more dehumidified supply air to the “Hasewelle." 

The automation solution includes eight ventilation and air-conditioning systems (VAC systems), which ventilate all areas in the new sports store. If necessary, they cool the supply air. The most powerful VAC system can condition up to 140,000 cubic meters of air per hour. The VAC system for the “Hasewelle” also includes an air dehumidification function. Together with sophisticated ventilation, this ensures that no moisture from the pool area reaches the sales areas. The system supplies the high-altitude training area with preconditioned supply air as required. The exchange of data with the third-party nitrogen enrichment system takes place via BACnet/Modbus.

The smart control system from Kieback&Peter not only ensures the perfect atmosphere for shopping and surfing. In the traditional merchant's house, the modern system is also highly efficient and uses only as much primary energy as is actually required.