polarbear, Pairi Daiza Zoo

Solving for a variety of indoor climates in a single project

With multiple indoor and outdoor environments for both people and animals, the Pairi Daiza Zoo project came with many challenges.

Pairi Daiza Zoo, Belgium

Systemair was able to create custom solutions from its broad product range to meet the project’s complex requirements.

Reliable ventilation for animal safety

All products needed to be exceptionally reliable and safe to ensure the comfort, safety, and well-being of both visitors and exotic animals.

Climate control for animal enclosures

Each animal enclosure came with specific climate regulation, air quality, and temperature requirements, from warmer rooms for reptiles and mammals to cooler rooms for wolves, penguins, and polar bears.

Special purpose cooling for penguin animal enclosure

The penguin aquarium, in particular, needed a special cold room application, without air treatment in the technical room where the air handling units were installed.

Technical support

Strong technical support during the project and post-installation was a must. Not only to make sure all products were installed correctly but to make sure they would continue to operate at maximum efficiency without interfering with the visitors’ experience.

Europe
2020
Hospitality
Main Consultant

Polytech Engineering

Systemair Products Supplied

AHUs, fans, fan coil units, chillers, and air curtains.

VMA Druart

VMA Druart
Europe
100–1000

The challenge

Named “Europe’s Best Zoo” in 2019, Pairi Daiza Zoo in Domaine de Cambron, Brugelette is Belgium’s biggest and most famous zoo and welcomes 2 million visitors every year.

As part of some renovations, Pairi Daira Zoo needed multiple air conditioning and filtering solutions for areas accessed by visitors and for animal enclosures. As a result, the project had multiple restrictions and requirements.

The solution

Having collaborated on multiple projects with Systemair before, Polytech Engineering knew that Systemair’s extensive range of products meant they had all the technical and practical options available at their fingertips.

This meant they could easily create custom solutions to suit the broad range of requirements for the huge variety of different indoor environments and animal enclosures at Pairi Daiza Zoo.

Unique combination of HVAC products

Working together, Systemair and Polytech Engineering came up with a global package that included air handling units, fans, fan coil units, chillers, and air curtains, which were installed as follows:

  • SAVE residential units and Syscoil fan coils for the new “hotel houses” designed to provide visitors with a direct view of animals.

  • HHFlex air handling units (AHUs) were used for the cold room application for the penguin aquarium.

  • 3 WQL water chillers to supply cold water (between -2 to +4 degrees) for the HHFlex AHUs.

  • New Geniox AHUs were installed at the zoo’s new hotel and restaurant.

  • 2 Syscroll air/water chillers to maintain the cold-water temperature in the artificial polar bear lake.

Gentoo Penguin, Pairi Daiza Zoo
A zoo keeper interacts with a gentoo penguin (Photo/Xinhua)

Keeping the penguins cold

The cold room application for the penguin aquarium presented the most challenges in this project. Yet Systemair came up with a solution and suggested installing two cooling coils so the air handling units would continue to function and deliver air at that was 4 degrees C ambient and 2.5 degrees C blowing, even if one coil was frozen.

Due to the success of this project, Systemair is also now working on two additional development projects for Pairi Daiza Zoo.

We enjoy working with Systemair products and trust their reliability. We had had very good technical follow up from the commercial team for that specific project. Systemair was the only supplier able to provide all the ventilation, cooling, and heating products for our project, and the prices were in line with the competition, making them the easy choice.

Aurore Compère | VMA Druart
Project Manager

With Systemair’s broad range of products we were able to meet all the requirements of one of Belgium’s most famous landmarks. Once we found the unique solution for the cold room application without air treatment in the technical room, we knew we could make this project a success.

Michael Frisch | Systemair Belgium
Account Manager

Geniox
Geniox offers ideal energy saving and low operational cost, with a long lifetime and the least impact on the environment.
Geniox
Geniox Core
Geniox Go
Geniox VOClean