CentraLine takes control of primary school
CentraLine Partner RAO Controls Ltd of Hull has recently completed a new building management system (BMS) for Broughton Primary School in north Lincolnshire. The new BMS is part of a £2.9 million refurbishment of the school, which has been expanded to combine the infant and junior schools on one site.
The existing building has been remodelled to enlarge classrooms, the hall and a new reception facility. The project also included an extension to the original building to provide additional classrooms, toilets and cloakrooms.
The new school facilitates a modern learning and teaching environment for the children and staff and has also been designed to optimise energy conservation and reduce CO2 emissions.
The latest Building Regulations will help minimise heat loss with improved insulation. A biomass (wood pellet) boiler has been installed to take the additional heating load and help reduce its carbon footprint.
The specification for the new BMS required the existing heating system of gas boilers, fan-coil units and radiators to be combined with underfloor heating installed in the new extension and hall.
Trevor Donaldson, managing director of RAO Controls, explains, ‘Broughton Primary School was an excellent project for RAO Controls, allowing us to demonstrate our experience of boiler-house refurbishment and our application knowledge of open-protocol integration.
The Hawk AX integration controller platform is eminently suitable to integrate the new and existing heating systems with the new boiler configuration.
‘The Modbus open protocol was used to integrate the underfloor heating and give individual control to each zone. Users have the ability to alter the temperature within their own space.
‘LON open-protocol modules were used to integrate the new biomass boiler. The existing gas boilers are sequenced to come on line when additional heat is required, but programmed to ensure the biomass unit is the lead boiler.
RAO incorporated a 10 inch CentraLine CBH panel-mounted touchscreen in the school’s building-management system to provide operator access to the integrated existing and new heating plant and equipment.
Graphical interfacing provides full operator access to all of the heating system, including logging of the M Bus heat meters installed during refurbishment.
Clear, easy-to-interpret graphics ensure the temperatures, alarms and trending can be quickly accessed and monitored.
Trevor Donaldson says, ‘RAO controls have used the Hawk AX integration controller as our primary building automation system since we became a CentraLine Partner.
The Niagara-based Coach AX programming platform is ideally suited for this application where quite complex integration, sequence control and graphical interfacing are all required on a comparatively small BMS.
‘The drive for efficiency based on multiple systems and products requires building-controls engineers to provide their clients with cost-effective BMS solutions that meet the demands of energy conservation and carbon reduction.
‘We were very pleased to be a part of the Broughton Primary School project and deliver a system that will help make the building a comfortable and energy efficient learning environment.’
Andrew Stokes-Roberts, CentraLine senior account manager, says, ‘RAO has been designing and installing control systems in local-authority buildings for over 30 years and has a wide experience of boiler-house refurbishment’
“This project is an excellent example of our CentraLine Partner RAO Control’s experience in delivering cost efficient solutions using Hawk AX’s integration, control and graphical supervision “all-in-one-box” capability.
‘We look forward to working with RAO Controls on future projects that help maximise the potential of energy-saving mechanical-plant design by advanced building-controls technology.’
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