{"id":3457,"date":"2014-01-15T12:17:44","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T17:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vivanext.com\/blog\/?p=3457"},"modified":"2014-01-15T12:17:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T17:17:44","slug":"keeping-you-warm-out-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/15\/keeping-you-warm-out-there\/","title":{"rendered":"keeping you warm out there"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This has been a really cold winter so far, and there\u2019s still a lot more winter to come.\u00a0 Fortunately for our viva riders on the newly opened Highway 7 rapidway, keeping you warm was one of our priorities when we designed the new median stations. \u00a0Like everything else with vivaNext, a lot of engineering analysis and planning was done to ensure the enclosures provide the right level of comfort in the winter.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the background.<\/p>\n

When we opened the prototype vivaNext station at Enterprise and Warden, we used a well-regarded heater that our original analysis showed would keep things adequately warm.\u00a0 But at 1000 watts, the heater wasn\u2019t quite powerful enough to provide the level of comfort we wanted to achieve.\u00a0 So when it came time to design the shelters for the larger rapidway program, we went back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

First, we determined how warm we wanted to make the shelters. Given that most people are only waiting for a few minutes, we didn\u2019t want to make the shelters so warm that people would need to take off their coats.\u00a0 Bearing this in mind, we decided that the right target would be to heat the shelters to 10 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n

Next, we needed to find a technology that would be energy efficient: with the enclosures\u2019 semi-outdoor design, using traditional space heaters would, in addition to requiring exhaust systems and airflow, be very inefficient. We decided to use radiant heaters, which work by projecting heat energy directly onto the people in the shelter (if you\u2019ve watched your kids play hockey at a rink, you\u2019ll know how effective this kind of heater can be). \u00a0Another benefit is that radiant heaters quickly ramp up to full power but can be shut off quickly as well, conserving energy.<\/p>\n

Last, we needed to determine how many heaters we\u2019d need to install to achieve our target temperature.\u00a0 We did a computer simulation of the bus shelter, programming in local weather data to assess the thermal conditions in the shelter for every hour throughout a typical year.\u00a0 The model took into consideration the concrete and glass design of the shelter, as well as replicating wind speeds and temperatures.<\/p>\n

Using all this information, we decided that four heaters, each providing 3000 watts of power, would be sufficient to achieve the 10 degrees target: that\u2019s 12,000 watts per enclosure (a typical electric fireplace is between 750 and 1500 watts). Sensors on the units detect when someone walks into the enclosure, starting the heater; if the sensors don\u2019t detect any other movement, the heaters will shut off after 30 minutes. \u00a0\u00a0And to help keep the warmth in the enclosures, we\u2019ve installed push buttons on the doors so they close automatically, as well as installing winter covers over the ventilation louvers on the doors.<\/p>\n

We hope you are pleased with the comfort we\u2019ve been able to design into the shelters, and are happy to make winter a little warmer for our viva riders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been a really cold winter so far, and there\u2019s still a lot more winter to come.\u00a0 Fortunately for our viva riders on the newly opened Highway 7 rapidway, keeping you warm was one of our priorities when we designed the new median stations. \u00a0Like everything else with vivaNext, a lot of engineering analysis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,1],"tags":[350,47,49,34,61,48,7,9],"class_list":["post-3457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-uncategorized","tag-growth","tag-markham","tag-newmarket","tag-rapidway","tag-richmond-hill","tag-vaughan","tag-vivanext","tag-york-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3457"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3460,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457\/revisions\/3460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrrtc.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}