Make it a Manifold
Nowadays, they’re not the first obvious choice, but Oliver Jones, Sales Application Engineer at Marflow Hydronics, thinks that manifolds might be too easily overlooked. He takes a look at how they might be the best solution for more projects than they’re currently used for.
When it comes to water distribution systems, using a centrally located, multi-terminal manifold unit offers many advantages. First of all, and this is probably one of the most important points, it makes life so much easier when it comes to commissioning.
Commissioning a system can be a pressurised task and one that often gets squeezed into a small time frame. Using a prefabricated manifold can save loads of time. All the work can be done in one place. Yes, it may be slightly more complicated if it’s a huge building and many manifolds have to serve multiple terminal units, but whichever way you look at it, it saves so much time compared to using more traditional valve sets.
By having just one single point, it also means that there are fewer problems in terms of actually having to access the points in the first place. Rather than walking around a building, going from place to place, trying to work around the space that’s been left, manifolds make it a straightforward task, saving time and resource cost.
In addition to the savings related to commissioning, manifolds also help massively at the installation stage too. For starters, they are a prefabricated solution. This means they arrive on site, at the time and location of the customer’s choice, pre-assembled, pre-tested and all ready to go. The only requirement on site is to set the manifold in place and pipe up to the terminal units. Therefore the commissioning can commence earlier.
There are even more benefits to manifolds when using them in conjunction with PICVs. They can control temperature zones by having a single PICV to control the manifold, taking care of either the whole zone or individually controlling each terminal unit with a PICV at each port. This provides a huge amount of flexibility.
It’s inevitable that changes will need to be made to the system at certain times, and having the control in the place that’s best suited means that these changes or additions become so much easier to manage.
Furthermore, maintenance is made easier. With this control, you can isolate terminal units from the same point and just look at the relevant parts of the system that need taking care of.
If you’re interested in learning more about the many benefits offered by manifold units, please visit the link below.
