Building Information - Lower Ground Floors

Hello,

I am sorry that I am unable to reply to your e-mail at the moment as I am out of the office from 11 April 2011 until Tuesday 3rd May 2011 due to annual leave. If your request is urgent please contact the relevant person below:

Tina Hamilton - 0121 204 4661 - Business School Languages and Combined Honours
Lindsey Hendrey - 0121 204 4676 - Engineering and Life and Health enquiries

Kind Regards,
Sandra Falkner

James

The main building has 2 levels below the Lower Ground Floor, these are known as the basement and Gallery, The basement is basically a corridor which runs below each wing of the building, there are lots of disused storage areas on each side of the corridor. One of these was once used as a shooting and archery gallery. It is no longer used as it does not have adequate ventilation and the whole of the area below the lower ground is treated a confined space with controlled access in line with health and safety requirements.

The various pumps, valves and plate heat exchangers which are required for the building heating systems are located in each of the corners, with pipes running throughout.

The gallery is an area where the gas water heaters that provide hot water to the building are located along with an air compressor and various air handling units which provide ventilation to parts of the building.

There is an old disused coal fired boiler adjacent to the gallery.

The total depth is probably about 9 to 10 meters, similar to any two other floors in the building. The whole area is below the general drainage system and so there are several sumps where small amounts of water may accumulate, this is automatically pumped back to the drainage system. There are no large flooded areas, or hidden levels.

This area extends below the North and South Wings for the same purpose and a pipe duct extends from the South Wing to just the other side of Aston Street where it then becomes a dead end.
The main heating pipes from the Energy Centre pass through this duct. There are no other tunnels which extend beyond this.

Basically this is very similar to what you expect to find below any building of this age and is quite unremarkable.

I hope this helps to satisfy your curiosity

Regards

Graham Faulks
Head of Estates Engineering

0121 204 4331        
[email address]
www.aston.ac.uk

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Faulks, Graham would like to recall the message, "Freedom of Information request - Building Information - Lower Ground Floors".