Case Study | Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) Café & Visitor Centre | Rainsave

First opened in 2009, this unique building, the highest visitor centre in the UK, is built in the most unforgiving of environments and has been made to withstand the mountain’s extreme weather conditions while blending in with its natural surroundings as much as possible. It houses a café and gift shop, where visitors can enjoy the breathtaking views through panoramic windows. There isn’t even a need to climb the mountain to enjoy the Snowdon Café and Visitor Centre as a train service on the Snowdon Mountain Railway is available to the Summit between the 15th of May and the 27th of October. There is no clear data of when the first building was built on Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), however it is likely there has been some sort of shelter at the summit since 1820, most likely to be wooden huts that deteriorated in the severe weather. A new building was built in 1935, and this was used as for experimental radio and radar work during the Second World War.

Due to the main Snowdon Car Park at Pen-y-Pass being likely the closest location of mains water to the Snowdon Summit, some 715 meters above, the need for an alternative source of water for the bulk of uses within the new visitor centre and café was required. A SPEL Rainsave, rainwater harvesting system was chosen to harvest the water (and snow melt!) from the roof of the building and store it for as many uses as possible at Hafod Eryri, including the flushing of toilets and maintenance uses. The only way to get potable water to the summit is via the train, therefore using harvested rainwater wherever possible is essential. A SPEL Tankstor 200 Series (1.2m dia.) 10,000 litre rainwater storage tank was chosen as a good size that could hold a good amount of water and was also had a small enough diameter and weight so that it could be transported by train to the summit. The water is pumped from the SPEL Tankstor storage tank to the Rainsave RS5S rainwater harvesting system via a single pump at 20 litres per minute to the control panel which incorporates the water treatment elements which are 2 particulate filters taking the particulate micron size down to 5 microns and then the water is treated via ultraviolet light to remove as much bacteria as possible before the water is supplied at pressure into the system.

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