2006 January

Sustainable designs do not have to be all about clever renewable technologies and blue-skies thinking. Traditional methods still have a lot to offer according to GEOFFREY ROBINSON

By measuring incoming water flow and temperature and modulating the burner, new water heaters from Andrews Water Heaters meet demand within ±1% accuracy. The Fasttflo range of wall-hung, balanced-flue, continuous-flow water heaters is available with outputs of 13 and 18 l/min, raised through 45 K. There are two models for indoor installation and two for outdoors, which do not require additional weather protection.

Design features of Vaillant high-efficiency ecoMAX 816E and 622E system boilers have been used to good effect to serve underfloor heating systems in this block of 11 luxury apartment of the site of Queensbury House in Newmarket.

A little extra effort goes a long way in enhancing energy efficiency when it is time to replace life-expired boiler plant — as we found out from KEN PERCIVAL and RICHARD WALKER.

The increasing use of condensing and high-efficiency boilers is accompanied by issues of flueing. JULIE MOORE examines them.

Prefabrication for one boiler manufacturer was driven by its customers, leading to a ‘can-do’ response to customer requests.

Developing regulations are driving changes in the boilers market. GRAHAM WILLIAMSON considers their implications and offers practical advice on product selection.

Hager’s Ashley Euro data modules make possible matching power and data accessories from one supplier.

Disano Illuminazione’s Elesystem modular lighting track has 10 copper conductors, each rated at 16 A. It provides 3-phase supply, neutral, dimmer live and neutral, neutral, emergency live and neutral, earth and a free track.

All low-voltage electrical services throughout 20 new accommodation buildings at Lancaster University is housed and protected by about 12 km of Mita’s Cableline Solo dado trunking. This £120 million project was designed by Michael Hyde Associates.

Lighting connection and control products, extra-low-voltage switching, connection units and prefabricated chains of sockets from Flex Connectors have been used on all nine floors of the new £40 million premises of Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham. The building includes classrooms, meeting rooms, a library and an operating theatre. It enables the college to expand its healthcare, medical and IT facilities.

Cablofil’s EZ-Path through-wall fire-stop protection system is covered in a 12-page brochure.

Over 6 km of bespoke cable tray has been installed in the largest scientific facility to be built in the UK for over 30 years. The Metstrut prefabricated cable tray serves the £250 million Diamond synchrotron on the Harwell/Chilton science campus in Oxfordshire. The trays carry all the complex electrical cabling requirements for each of the 24 experimental research stations and the control rooms, laboratories and offices.

Bringing data to office desks is every bit as important as bringing power — and is becoming more so. ALAN DURRANT explains the approaches available and how are they evolving?

Modern busbar trunking systems offer many benefits over cable, as JOHN CLARKE explains.

With welded steel-wire cable tray becoming increasingly popular for cable management, MATTHEW WAY dispels a few modern misconceptions.

Contractor SES has been awarded the £2.3 million contract to install M&E services in the St James Gate development in Newcastle. Works will be completed within a tight 16-week schedule to enable end client The Big Lottery Office to move in by February 2006. The development incorporates office, leisure and retail accommodation.

Aspen Air Conditioning has become one of the first partners in Mitsubishi Electric’s ‘Business solutions partner’ programme.

Buro Happold has been appointed building-services and structural engineers for a project to develop the biomedical building for the University of Strathclyde.

New construction orders in the private commercial sector bucked the general trend by showing a 13% increase in value in the three months to October 2005 compared to the previous three months, according to the Department of Trade & Industry. They also showed an increase of 32% compared with the same period a year earlier. Year-on-year figures showed a 3% fall.

Thermal Transfer has won a £1 million-plus contract to design and build an additional production facility for independent pharmaceutical manufacturer Thornton & Ross.

Following significant growth over the last three years in modular packages for M&E services, MEP Solutions is expanding its team and moving to a new site in Coleshill.

Dobson White Boulcott Ltd is acting as project manager on the £40 million project to consolidate Middlesex University on its Hendon Campus in north-west London. The scheme has been designed by BPR Architects and is scheduled for completion in September.

A year on from ACE, the Association for Consultancy & Engineering, repositioning itself as the business association for the consultancy and engineering professions, outgoing chairman Desmond Scott believes it is making a real impact in the industry.

Glasgow-based electrical contractor WWW has won its first major contract in England with a £5 million commission to upgrade and rewire local-authority houses for Newcastle District Council. The 5-year rolling programme to upgrade social housing is part of the council’s decent-homes project.

Hushon on the south coast has become the latest company to become a distributor of Toshiba’s VRF air-conditioning and split systems.

Robert Higgs, director of the Heating & Ventilating Contractors’ Association has been appointed an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) in the New Year Honours Lists. The honour is in recognition of his services to the environment.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has switched on the first stage of the CIS ‘solar tower’ project in Manchester. The south side of the 122 m-high building went live as Mr Blair pressed the switch feeding electricity into the national grid.

Grundfos Pumps has won the global Green Apple Award for its approach to environmental issues — beating nearly a thousand entries from around the world.

With forthcoming Building Regulations moving away from elemental design and focusing on what the outcome is in design terms, the president of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, Donald Leeper, has called for the operational performance of buildings to be compared with design intentions.

The opening of the Monodraught Gallery at the University of Nottingham demonstrates a range of practical applications of renewable energy

A comprehensive programme of training and people development has long underpinned the business of contractor NG Bailey — and is central to its business plans for the next few years, as MARTIN BAILEY explains.

Samantha McDonough explains why CIBSE is embarking on a 100-day campaign to reduce carbon emissions and why it is important to get involved.

Carbon emissions have been reduced by over 10 500 t by GSH’s Energyplus contract-energy-management service over the last two years. The savings amount to over £1 million off the energy bills of clients.

A 21% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions for a group of retirement apartments in Cheltenham is being achieved using small-scale CHP, compared with centralised power generation and heating-only boiler plant.

The second phase of applying Chalmor’s TouchStat heating controllers to optimise energy consumption at the University of Manchester involves residential accommodation for students and hotel accommodation associated with the university’s conference centre.

To maximise energy efficiency in the new Radisson SAS hotel in Frankfurt, German, the building-management system is interfaced with the front-office computer, the lighting-management system and fire-damper controls.

Summer temperatures in the factory of Asset Demo at Earl Shilton near Leicester have been reduced from 30°C to 22°C following the installation of evaporative cooling.

Crane’s Z3000 Dominator flow-management system for fan-coil units is among a full range of control valves being supplied by Crane Fluid Systems for management of the heating and air-conditioning systems for Tower Wharf on Bristol’s floating harbour district.

Replacing oil-fired boilers with an air-to-water heat-pump, heat-recovery system in a luxury hotel in Bangkok will achieve a payback of four years.

As part of the refurbishment of St Olaf House near London Bridge, Fan Coil Service has serviced and upgraded over 160 fan-coil units. Fan Coil Service is the recently established servicing and preventive-maintenance arm of Ability Projects.

BAA has replaced chemical water treatment on cooling towers at Heathrow Airport with ozone water treatment. The systems were supplied by Waterwise Technology as part of work to upgrade and increase the capacity of the cooling towers on Terminal 3 and adding additional cooling towers to Terminal 1. The selection of these ozone system follows several years’ practical experience with similar systems supplied by Waterwise for Terminals 1 and 3.

Over 40 000 m (linear) of Kingspan rigid phenolic Kooltherm pipe insulation and 3000 m2 of Kooltherm duct insulation have been installed in the multi-million redevelopment of Russell’s Hospital in Dudley.

A sustainable natural-ventilation system from SE Controls has been chosen for one of the most sustainable office developments in the UK. The new central office of the National Trust in Swindon is designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley and is built on a large brownfield site in the Great Western Railway works. The 2-storey building accommodates 430 staff and has a shop and public restaurant.

As part of a requirement by DEFRA that no modern facilities should be visible following the restoration of the Great Barn in the Teign Valley near Newton Abbot, heating is provided by a specially designed Robbens underfloor system. This Grade 2 building dates from the 14th century and is now a venue for business seminars, weddings and other local events.

Training facilities for Glow-worm boilers are part of the new GasTec training centre at Milton Keynes. Glow-worm’s boiler-training centre offers installers a one-day product-specific course on its latest range of condensing boilers. They can also gain the Certificate in Energy Efficiency for Domestic Heating.

Developed to provide an interface between wet heating systems in apartments and central boiler plant, the Danfoss Redan Akva Lux range from Taconova can also provide instantaneous hot water. There is no need for separate water storage in the apartments served.

Demonstrating the ability of Rinnai Infinity external water heaters to cope with harsh winter conditions is this site of apartments in upstate New York. A hundred of these continuous-flow water heaters were used to replace other units that were less capable of coping with temperatures down to –31°C. They are installed on the outside of these apartments to provide hot water for showers, baths and sinks. Specialised technology and complete frost proofing means that units can operate at full efficiency, even in sub-zero temperatures.

Lochinvar boilers and water heaters have been used in a prefabricated plant room for a new House of Fraser store in Maidstone. Constant Air Systems made the plant room and selected the Lochinvar equipment in conjunction with Dowling Blunt Building Services.

Because Ferroli holds all sections for its GN range of cast-iron boilers in the UK, it was possible to make and deliver two large boilers for Wigan & Leigh College very quickly. These two boilers each have an output of 590 kW, and they have replaced seven life-expired boilers.

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, built under a PFI contract, has its heating and hot-water loads served by four Viessmann Vitomax boilers. They deliver, in total, 14 000 kW and form the largest installation of Viessmann boilers in the UK.