Plant Room Installation
The old plant room was dark, damp and not a great place to house a boiler, controls and an electrical panel. Being in a basement that was sited under the pavement this made terminating the new flue impossible.
The only solution was to move the entire plant room approx. 25 metres through conference rooms, hallways to the rear of the property.
We ran 2.5” primaries and a 2” gas supply in barrel pipework in to the new plant room.
Two Viessmann Vitodens 200 commercial boilers were sited on a three boiler frame (a third boiler may be added in the future) with a Vitocell 200 cylinder used for the hot water demand.
Our client didn’t want to pressurise the heating circuit so a floor standing plate heat exchanger was used for hydraulic separation, this means the heating circuit can stay vented and the boiler side is protected against any dirt/sludge damage.
The boilers run on weather compensation so the boiler outputs change depending on the outside temperature, the cooler it is outside the hotter the radiators and vice versa. This generates large savings as the boilers only generate the heat they need depending on the heat curve that has been individually set for this specific building.
The installation also consists of;
- Grundfos Magna 3 Twin Headed Pump Set – gives backup if one pump fails
- Viessmann carbon monoxide sensors fitted to each boiler – Shuts down boilers if carbon monoxide (CO) is detected.
- Gas leak detection system with four sensors along gas pipe run – shuts gas solenoid if gas leak detected.
- Integration in to buildings fire alarm system – shuts gas solenoid when activated.
- 2.5” Spirotech dirt separator – Traps dirt particles that are easily removed to a drain point.
- Xpot Compact (combined dosing pot, magnetic filter, cartridge filter & air separator) – We have reduced the cartridge filter down to 5 microns - which reduces system failure due to poor water quality.
- VitoCare remote access – which lets us access how the system is currently running and informs us if a problem arises.
This plant room currently provides heating and hot water to 36 individual apartments, office areas, conference / meeting rooms and communal areas.
A similar setup would work equally well in other housing association buildings, schools, care homes etc.
The new installation has also solved the problem of when to turn on and off the heating for the building. The previous set up created a lot of arguments between the tenants and the landlord with some tenants saying they were too cold whilst the others were too hot.
