October 2, 2023
The RHB team recently attended the official opening of the new state-of-the-art Hemel Hempstead Crematorium alongside members of the project team from Haverstock Architects, McConvilles, Webb Yates, Plinke and Buxton Construction.
The newly built crematorium provides a chapel for 140 people alongside space for congregation, crematory, administration, staff, and a separate pavilion with memorial facilities. Specially designed and constructed energy and CO2 emissions mitigation measures provide a 45% reduction below the Part L 2013 target CO2 emissions rate.
The building includes an extensive PV photovoltaic array and a heat recovery system to recover heat from the cremation and mercury abatement filtration process to transfer the waste heat into heat for space heating and creating domestic hot water.
This technology is specific to crematoria and involves capturing heat from the cremation process flue gases. The temperature of the flue gases from the cremation equipment is lowered before the mercury abatement filtration plant, and a glycol/water solution is circulated through a heat exchanger coil in the cremator flues to extract heat. The captured high-grade heat is stored in a thermal storage vessel connected to the building's heating system to act as the primary heat source. A standby gas-fired boiler provides a backup supply of heat when required.
Watford Borough Council has developed the building design on behalf of the West Herts Crematorium Joint Committee (Dacorum Borough Council, Hertsmere Borough Council, St Albans City & District Council, Three Rivers District Council).
RHB completed all MEP designs from RIBA Stage 2-7 and included new incoming utility supplies.
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