News Archive News 2009 Story

Adelaide zoo’s latest arrivals, four year old Wang Wang and his three year old female companion Funi, are enjoying the comfort of their new enclosure complete with refrigerated rocks designed and installed by the Adelaide branch of Haden Engineering.

The second oldest zoo in Australia, Adelaide Zoo houses almost 300 native and exotic species and has a successful breeding program. The Panda enclosure incorporates a panda holding area with a bamboo room complete with bamboo specially delivered from Sichuan province. It also houses day rooms, keeper’s corridors, kitchen areas and plant room on the north western side.

“The South Australian climate is much hotter than the pandas’ natural environment, so great effort has gone into ensuring they will not suffer from the hot, dry conditions”, explains Mark Stevenson of Haden’s Adelaide installation team. “To accommodate this, the enclosure is cooled in two ways: an air handling unit services the day rooms while the actual enclosure is cooled using six large, chilled rocks spread around the periphery of the area.”

The chilled ‘rocks’ are molded from glass reinforced concrete to resemble rock formations. Inside is a copper coil supplied with water chilled to 6 degrees and a temperature sensor which is used to maintain the temperature to around 10 degrees. This will provide a constant source of cooling even in the outside environment and will allow the pandas to move freely from the air-conditioned enclosed space of the day rooms to the outdoors enclosure in relative comfort.