All Black Rooftop Units for Tauranga’s Thirty Eight Elizabeth Project

A great example of the flexibility and customisation Temperzone is willing to undertake for clients to ensure we fit the specification.

Tauranga’s Thirty Eight Elizabeth, a $200 million construction project, is currently the largest development of its kind in New Zealand outside of Auckland. It includes 8,000sq metres of retail on two levels, 97 high-end apartments across 10 storeys and two towers, and 23 luxury townhouses. The prestigious shopping complex centres around a flagship Farmers Ltd double level retail store. The development is set to revitalise Tauranga’s heart of the city by bringing an exciting new community of exceptional living, shopping and dining together in an architecturally designed environment.

Tauranga, with a population of 150,000, is a harbourside city in the Bay of Plenty region in the North Island of New Zealand. The Port of Tauranga is New Zealand's largest port in terms of gross export tonnage and efficiency. Tauranga is located around a large harbour and is therefore subject to significant sea spray across the coastal regions.

Temperzone’s customer, Tempest Ltd, was selected by the developer and BECA consultancy to supply the air conditioning units on a design/build contract. Tempest has a long-standing relationship with Temperzone and has used the custom adaptable Thermal Cube PA series of roof top packaged AC units extensively for more than 15 years.

In this development, Temperzone's sales executive negotiated with Tempest Ltd and was supported Custom Engineering to successfully acquire the order for 4 unique PA3600 Rooftop Packaged Air Conditioning units in the Thermal Cube PA range. The PA3600 delivers 115kW of cooling capacity with 6000 l/sec via 3 compressors where one is variable capacity, high efficiency EC plug fans, electronic expansion valves with pressure transducer refrigeration system control through Temperzone’s proprietary UC8 system controller.

As the units will be on a lower plant platform than the residential apartments, the architect wished to disguise the equipment by utilising a dark horizontal elevated louvre system above the vertical discharge rooftop AC units. Thus, the customisation of the units was to be powder coated Matt Gravel to not stand out under the louvres.

They also required high static outdoor fans to cope with the increased static pressure of the louvres. The base, main walls and drain tray were all to be stainless steel. Not only is the conditioned air stream of the PA unit acoustically lagged, the compartment with the 3 compressors is also insulated with acoustic insulation. As part of the service, Temperzone fitted the controls package received from Tempest Ltd into the unit during construction.