This document discusses the challenges of servicing large and tall buildings. It notes that simply scaling up small building systems does not work for large structures. Mechanical ventilation, pressurized water systems, high-temperature steam heating, electrical infrastructure, and multiple elevator banks are needed to service deep interior spaces and heights of over 10 floors. Servicing tall buildings requires specialized engineering of complex systems and consumes significant floor space, substantially increasing construction costs.

1. Services for large buildings
Increase in size requires new
solutions

2. Big buildings need big ideas
• Holes in the wall can ventilate small
buildings
• Holes in the walls can’t ventilate deep
buildings
• Ducted mechanical ventilation needed

3. Ventilating deep buildings
• Mechanical air handling needed to
reach the interior
• Large ducting needed to move air
around in large volumes at low speed
• Increased building volume needed to
accommodate the large ducting
• Servicing costs both directly (air
handling systems) and indirectly
(increased building size to house
mechanical plant) raise the basic costs
of large buildings.

4. Water supply in tall buildings
pump
Pressure release valves now needed
Water to short buildings
delivered by gravity, no
problems

5. Water to tall buildings
• Just scaling up a small system doesn’t
work
• Pumping needed
• Only stored water can be used, so
health problems
• Pressure in pipe work can be immense
at lowest levels
• Then you need hot water too…

6. Heating tall buildings
Boiler plant
Pressure enormous at
base, water too hot
Pressure low at
top, water too cold

7. High temperature fluids transport heat more efficiently.
Circulating, very
high temp steam
Boiler plant- generating
high temp, high pressure
steam
Heat exchangers on
each floor (calorifiers)
Use steam to heat low
pressure water locally
Protecting enclosure
needed, steam is
dangerous

8. Heating tall buildings
• Again, scaling up small plant doesn’t
work
• High temperature steam needed
• Local calorifiers and heating controls
needed, probably on each floor
• Safety is endangered, so protected
enclosures and warning systems
needed
• Heating tall buildings is expensive.

9. Air-conditioning tall buildings
Individual, local a/c units
can be used. This is
madness, messy,
environmentally disastrous,
noisy and uses up all the
available wall space.

10. Centralised a/c
Cooling plant, usually
on top floor, vents heat,
creates and circulates
very cold water
Local air intake, air
cooled by cold water
OR
Ducted conditioned air
from air conditioning
plants every 10 floors or
so

11. And there’s more
• What about electricity?
– 240V AC will not provide enough power for
a large building, it’s only enough for a
single house.
– 3 phase power supply is needed, which is
far more dangerous
– Protective enclosures needed for the high
tension supplies, which are tapped for a
240 V supply at each floor

12. Electricity supply for tall buildings
High tension bare
copper conductors,
“Bus bars” run up a
protected service
shaft. Provide “3
phase” supply
Each floor taps off a
single phase, 240V
supply from one live
bus bar and the
neutral bar

13. Where’s the floor space gone?
• Services for multi-
storied buildings devour
floor space.
• We haven’t even put
the lifts and stairs in yet

14. Hang the services on the outside?
• Pompidou Centre, Paris
• HSBC HQ, Hong Kong

15. Stick them on top?
• “Chippendale Building”
New York
• Seagram building, New
York
Plan view
Service
tower
Office
floor

16. What about lifts?
• Multi-storey buildings
have lots and lots of
people in them
• One lift for 1,000 people
on 100 floors is not going
to work very well…

17. Double Decker lifts
• Simple solution which halves
the problem
• Each floor of the lift serves
alternate floors in the building
• Escalator needed to the
second lowest level
• Problems arise with disabled
access.
• Building must have an even
number of floors and all floor
heights identical…

18. Multiple lifts
• Several lift shafts
will help, but they
take up an
enormous amount
of floor space
• The ground floor of
a modern
skyscrapers may
have 25-33% of its
ground floor area
devoted to lifts and
lobbies.

19. Multi-level lift grouping
Sky lobby
Sky lobby
Ground lobby
High speed lifts just
between lobbies
Zoned lifts served by
lobbies
In some large
buildings there may be
several lifts in a lift
shaft, one above the
other.

20. Sky lobby, Central Plaza building Hong Kong
• Sky lobbies often used for café’s gardens, a/c
equipment, anything to make people forget
that they are having to change lifts, whether
they want to or not

21. Burj Dubai: tallest building in the world

22. Summary
• Servicing tall and large buildings is highly
complex, inevitably expensive and in some
cases dangerous.
• Qualified services/mechanical engineer
needs to be part of the design team
• Do not scale up small service installations to
meet the needs of large buildings, it doesn’t
work
• Article about use of a sky lobby in Austria
http://www.architectureweek.com/2002/0130/environment_1-1.html