2009 January

Inviron has completed the design and installation of M&E services for the 7000 m2 showroom of Glasswells World of Furniture in Ipswich.

Ormandy Group has acquired Aquatherm Sales UK, which has been the exclusive supplier of Aquatherm plastic piping systems for building-services applications across the UK since 2001. Aquatherm provides complete plastic pipework systems from 20 to 250 mm diameter as standard packages or bespoke designs. The company offers full in-house CAD prefabricated system design and off-site fabrication facilities. Paul Cooper (pictured), managing director of Ormandy, tells us that the companies have collaborated on a number of projects, including the MoD Aspire Scheme, and that the acquisition was the next logical step.

Tour & Andersson is presenting its seminar on the ‘Three hydronic conditions’ on 19 March at Aston Villa Football Club from 3 to 7.30 p.m. This seminar is aimed at designers, specifiers, consultants and contractors of waterborne heating and cooling systems and is led by Dr. Jean-Christophe Carette (pictured), head of T&A’s hydronic college.

Baxi Commercial’s training academy has been recognised as a British Plumbing Employees Council (BPEC) centre. Several professional courses and the certification process take place at the training academy and are handled by a BPEC trainer and assessor.

Parts Center, part of the Wolseley group, has announced that 25 of its branches have become official Worcester, Bosch Group profile stockists.

Lindab Ventilation has relocated its branch at Stockton-on-Tees to new premises on the North Tees Industrial Estate. The move doubles the size of the local Lindab outlet for ductwork, fans and components.

Riegens Lighting has launched a continuous lighting solution for pelmets that combines flexibility with shadow-free performance.

Riegens Lighting has launched a continuous lighting solution for pelmets that combines flexibility with shadow-free performance. Ambit is designed with a simple plug-and-play system and includes overlapping lamps to ensure there are no visible dark spots on continuous-run projects. Ambit uses energy-efficient T5 fluorescent lamps and provides direct light distribution. It can be surface mounted or recessed into a pelmet. The system is provided with through wiring (3 x 1.5 mm2) and a plug/socket arrangement at each end of luminaires for ease of installation

A school in Chelmsford has its heating and hot water provided by a Calorex ground-source heat pump served by three boreholes drilled 65 m deep under the playground.

Danlers manufactures a comprehensive range of passive infra-red occupancy switches for automatic lighting control. The products are easy to install, using the existing wiring in a building. They are ideal for energy saving in offices, factories, schools etc.

Water and chiller services and maintenance specialist Coolmation Services has added environmental accreditation ISO 14001 standard to is credentials following a 2-stage audit of its environmental-management system by BSI. Mark Poyner, service director with Coolmation Group, says, ‘ISO 14001 is an important endorsement of our business. Achieving the standard demonstrates Coolmation Service’s green credentials and illustrates that we have made a commitment to continued environmental improvement.’

The UCU Room Display provides attractive and readable room control display for individual fan-coil control. The UCU Room Display is connected to the advanced energy efficient controller which is part of the UnitronUC32 BEMS. Its built-in space temperature sensor measures the room temperature which is then displayed on the very clear LCD screen.

The ETC6000 series of electronic burner controls from Energy Technology & Control has been certified for inclusion in an SIL3 (safety integrity level) loop.

BSRIA now offers Display Energy Certificates as part of a package of compliance services and as part of its drive to help building operators improve energy efficiency.

The Gold Series LightSpot from Ex-Or is designed to provide sophisticated lighting control in school classrooms to help schools save energy and meet Government targets for carbon reduction.

A new range of twin-head pumps from Armstrong is suitable for higher temperatures and pressures than their predecessors. There are 11 pumps in the range with duties from 2.8 l/s at 31 kPa to 49 l/s at 96 kPa.

The use of Gripple hangers for suspending M&E services in the new 8-storey, £78 million Darwin centre of the Natural History Museum has thrown up an unexpected benefit.— fewer horizontal surfaces on which destructive beetles can breed.

The organisers of H&V09 at the National Exhibition Centre from 24 to 26 February have teamed up with “Modern Building Services” to sound out the industry’s opinion of the low-carbon technology that has the best potential to cut carbon emissions. You can find out more about the technologies and how to vote for your choice by clicking here.

The ground-source heat pump, used either in borehole or slinky installations, is a long-established technology in many areas of northern Europe. As targets for reducing carbon loom ever closer and energy prices continue to rise in the UK, the technology is becoming increasingly attractive. Heat pumps extract energy from the Sunlight that heats up the Earth. They convert this low-grade heat into high-grade heat. Even taking into account energy losses from electricity transmission, ground-source heat pumps offer impressive efficiencies. Most ground-source heat pumps have a coefficient of performance of around four.

A plethora of building-services technologies will play a crucial role in cutting carbon emissions in the UK, and these products will be highlighted at H&V09 at the National Exhibition Centre from 24 to 26 February. Indeed the UK will only meet its carbon targets by utilising the full range of solutions and adopting the most appropriate technology for each project. This makes the role of consultants and contractors absolutely crucial. However, despite a number of low-energy H&V solutions on the market, H&V09 is keen to find one carbon champion — the technology that has the best potential to cut carbon. The show’s organisers have partnered with Modern Building Services to promote a low-carbon-technology campaign. Over the last six months the H&V industry has nominated a long list of low-carbon H&V technologies which has now been narrowed down to 10 products. Readers are invited to vote for their favourite low-carbon technology by clicking here. The winning low carbon product will be announced at H&V09 on Wednesday 25 February at 3 pm, in the seminar theatre, to herald the start of the ‘big debate’ on renewables.

Alexandra Krstanovic explains how Faber Maunsell delivered the University of Nottingham’s requirements for sustainable design and integration of renewable energy sources for the Gateway Building on the extension to its Jubilee Campus.

Sophisticated data centres require totally reliable supporting services, but that does not mean that substantial reductions in energy consumption cannot be achieved — such as more than half at the North London Data Centre of Fujitsu, as explained to Ken Sharpe.

The application of carbon dioxide as a secondary refrigerant is now being presented as a topic by the Trox Academy at Thetford. Another recently introduced topic is the calculation of energy savings for VAV fan-coil units using CIBSE-approved software.

The JCT 98 form of contract is to be withdrawn from publication in the Spring, when publisher Sweet & Maxwell will no longer make print copies available and withdraw stock from bookshops.

Following an investment programme of over £1 million in manufacturing processes, Vent-Axia is launching a whole new range of ventilation products for tomorrow’s markets. The launches follow a review of parts of the product ranges that had become dated and no longer fitted market-leading requirements.

In another complete package, Shouksmiths and Morfitts have completed the £700 000 building-services contract for the new sixth-form centre at Norton College in Malton.

Skerritt, one of Nottingham’s oldest mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors, has moved to new offices in the centre of the city. The company’s turnover has grown consistently since 2006, and it commissioned Bodhill Construction to unify two buildings, one on Huntingdon Street and the other on St Mark’s Street, into 1400 m2 of open-plan facilities over four floors. About 80% of the company’s staff in Nottingham have moved to the new headquarters.

Building-services company SES has recently completed £5.7 million-worth of M&E development work on one of the country’s first projects in the ‘Building schools for the future’ programme and has been award a contract worth nearly £9 million to design and install all aspects of the M&E services for Rail House in the Piccadilly area of Manchester.

Balfour Kilpatrick has been awarded a £1.4 million contract for a new state-of-the-art teaching facility at the University of York. The 3500 m2 building will provide much-needed teaching space and also house the main IT hub.

Grundfos has won a Pump Industry Award for its Alpha2 domestic circulator, which has an A Energy Rating Label. A key feature of these pumps is the AutoAdapt feature that enables a pump to match its performance to system requirements. T

The application of inter-seasonal energy storage has received a boost with the formation of a strategic alliance between polymer specialist Rehau and Icax, developer of the Interseasonal Heat Transfer system (IHT) for using the ground beneath a building to store heat when the building is cooled in the Summer and release that heat in the Winter.

The application of inter-seasonal energy storage has received a boost with the formation of a strategic alliance between polymer specialist Rehau and Icax, developer of the Interseasonal Heat Transfer system (IHT) for using the ground beneath a building to store heat when the building is cooled in the Summer and release that heat in the Winter. After successful trials and pilot projects Icax has appointed Rehau as the key supplier of PE-Xa pipework for the ground arrays for its solar ThermalBanks and solar collectors. The alliance between the two companies is based on Rehau’s expertise in the polymer industry, with a 40-year history in designing and manufacturing pipework for the underfloor-heating, civil-engineering, plumbing and renewable-energy sectors. A recent unusual project involved the two companies working on a pilot project for the Highways Agency in which IHT technology was successfully used to capture solar energy from the road in the Summer, store it in ThermalBanks in the ground and release it back to the road during the following Winter to keep the road free from ice.

AMS Pups has been named Pump Distributor of the Year 2008 for the second year running at the British Pump Manufacturers Association Awards. The company is the specialist pump brand of BSS Industrial and was launched just three years ago.

M&E consultants Operon Design have been appointed to two multi-million-pound projects for The Manchester College.

Airco Group, based in Hull, is converting its new fleet of vehicles to run on vegetable oil. The company operates throughout the UK servicing, maintaining and installing all aspects of air conditioning, refrigeration, heating and electrical systems and has bought state-of-the-art equipment to make its own biofuel on site to power its fleet of cars and Ford Transit vans.

The new Travelodge that is part of the major redevelopment of Fort Dunlop in Birmingham has three gas-fired storage water heaters from Andrews Water Heaters to supply domestic hot water. The water heaters meet all the DHW requirements for the 10-storey Travelodge — including bedroom showers and wash hand basins, bar/cafe kitchen and staff toilets.

EPEE (European Partnership for Energy & the Environment) has welcomed the promotion of air-source and water-source energy as sources of energy under EU law following the adoption by the European Parliament of the EU Directive on the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources.

This year marks the 21st anniversary of the introduction of Heatrae Sadia’s Megaflo HE unvented hot-water system — which continues to evolve to meet new market and technical requirements.

Architects and clients are major driving forces in facilitating the greener design of buildings, according to the Green Index survey carried out by Autodesk and RIBA.

Peter McCree of ICOM Energy Association, the body that represents the UK’s commercial heating industry, reflects on how proposed legislation could impact on the industry.

Kanmor Control Systems’ 264e boiler controller incorporates weather compensation and other features to reduce fuel consumption by 10 to 18% compared with systems using just thermostats.

A team of lecturers from Cambridge University’s engineering department has won the 2008 Happold Brilliant Award for excellence in the teaching of building physics in the context of a low-carbon economy.

Kanmor Control Systems’ 264e boiler controller incorporates weather compensation and other features to reduce fuel consumption by 10 to 18% compared with systems using just thermostats.

Atlantic Boilers has supplied high-efficiency boilers for Star Refrigeration’s testing plant in Glasgow for the demonstration and testing of its high-efficiency chillers, including the Indigo chiller being launched early this year.

To reduce disruption on the busy Walsall Campus of the University of Wolverhampton, a new boiler room was made off site by Armstrong for contractor C. A. Sothers Ltd.

As part of the £22 million refurbishment of the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, space heating is provided by three Hamworthy Purewell VariHeat 180 kW condensing boilers.

Liquid biofuels are now becoming prominent in the heating sector as a more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. Yan Evans examines how liquid biofuels could play a large part in helping the building industry find more sustainable and efficient energy solutions.

A new monastery in North Yorkshire will be heated by a wood-chip boiler with an output of 185 kW. Specified by Faber Maunsell, consulting engineer for the project, the boiler and its associated fuel system were installed by Morfitts as part of the £925 000 M&E contract for the monastery at Crief Farm at Wass.

Stephen Laws looks at the future for biomass boilers and the issues surrounding their specification for heating and hot water in domestic, commercial and public-sector applications.

The development of a new range of water-cooled chillers by Carrier offers the possibility of integrating a building’s need for sources of heat and cooling into one item of plant.

Weather compensation works with a sensor outside and another in the boiler communicating with each other to vary the flow temperature. This is more efficient than the boiler turning on and off, which wastes energy. Weather compensation controls will get better results out of boilers (therefore cutting carbon) and are relatively cheap and simple to install — Yet they have not caught on in the UK in a big way. On a positive note, this potential could be unlocked quite simply and without huge expense.