Weighing 70 tonnes and 85 metres long: two extra-powerful special cranes had to be brought in from outside South Tyrol to lift the new service bridge over the Isarco River south of the Loreto Bridge. After days of preparatory work, the bridge was successfully lifted into place on Thursday morning. The bridge is used for sustainable building cooling for the WaltherPark as well as for supplying the buildings on Via Trento. Currently, around 300 workers are employed on the WaltherPark construction sites.
“The construction work is progressing rapidly,” said Heinz Peter Hager, President of WaltherPark AG. The approximately 300 construction workers are at work on all WaltherPark trades and infrastructure projects: on the extension of the upper floors of WaltherPark, on the façades, on plant and installation work inside the building, on the Piazza Walther-Via Perathoner underground tunnel section, on the cycle path including the pedestrian and bike bridge in the Loreto Bridge area and on the river structure below the Loreto Bridge for sustainable building cooling including the service bridge, which was lifted into place on Thursday.
Heinz Peter Hager and his employees personally supervised the lifting of the bridge. “It is a particularly complex and delicate process that requires the most precise preparation and the most professionalism,” says Hager. The steel structure weighs almost 70 tonnes and is 85 metres long – and it had to be positioned precisely from its berth on the Loreto Bridge onto the guide along the Loreto Bridge. “A millimetre job,” said Hager and numerous onlookers. The steel construction was built by the steel construction company Auluma from Prato all’Isarco, which also planned the lifting together with the WaltherPark technicians.
Several pipes run through the bridge: In future, the cooling water for WaltherPark will flow through two thermally insulated pipes with a diameter of 40 cm from the heat exchangers in the river structure to the buildings to be cooled and back again. The mode of operation is as energy-saving as it is environmentally friendly: in a specially constructed channel in the Isarco, the cool river water flows around the heat exchangers, which are connected to the closed cooling water circuit, thanks to the natural gradient. The cooling water heated by that used to cool the building is thus cooled here naturally and flows back into the building. “In this way, we avoid the use of cooling systems on the roofs, which would have to be electrically operated and would also generate waste heat and noise – this has an unfavourable effect as a heat island, especially in urban areas,” explained project manager Martin Schieder.
The river water cooling system was designed together with Alperia for the WaltherPark, but other buildings in this area of the city can also be connected. The river water cooling system will be operated by Alperia after its completion.
The new bridge will also be crossed by other pipes, including those for drinking water, electricity, gas and fibre optics, which will supply the residential buildings on Via Trento.