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Eton College ESAC

Jasper Hijink • Aug 07, 2023

Eton College Sports and Aquatic Centre

Background

Eton College stands in the vanguard of educational developments and Sport has been central to the Eton curriculum for some time. A new Eton Sports and Aquatic Centre (ESAC) opened its doors in 2022. It provides a 25m indoor swimming pool, a four court multi-purpose sports hall and associated spectator, changing and administration facilities. The pool incorporates a movable floor to increase flexibility, allowing the pool to be used for swimming, water polo and teaching. The multi-purpose sports hall is designed to become a 200-seat examination hall to facilitate examination use by the school.

The brand new, high-performance facility is set in a historic, landscaped setting to create a grounded building that feels part of Eton’s rich traditions of craftsmanship, and is also an enjoyable, accessible space to use.

Challenge

To minimise the carbon footprint, maximise energy efficiency and create the right environment for the changing requirements of the facilities, a flexible and robust lighting control was needed. This should be capable to expand on the site with future developments and offer flexible control and monitoring.

Solution

The Mymesh wireless control system avoids any need for cabling and wired connections to switches or the central control system. The intelligence is distributed in the network, making it a very robust system.

All lights across the three floors, including the pool and sports hall were equipped with a Mymesh wireless device. Most lights are controlled using DALI, but the stylish pendants in the spectator area are mains-dimming.

All the areas are typically controlled with PIR sensors. This guarantees that the lights switch-off if there is nobody around. For certain areas, and especially the sport hall, a switch is provided in reception. Different lighting scenes can be selected, for example when the sports hall is used for examination.

Benefits

Having the lighting on an automated system brings great benefits to energy saving. At the same time, the system is flexible for the various uses of the building.

The system is adaptive for future expansion, both for this and future buildings. The Mymesh system can monitor the energy usage and report on emergency lighting and faults, helping facilities management to optimise the maintenance and performance of the site.