Plymouth High School for Girls
Energy Saving Boiler Upgrade – Project Case Study Founded in 1874, Plymouth High School for Girls is a grammar school with a long tradition of excellence, and provides a wide range of education facilities for 800+ students from year 7 to year 13. Located near to the centre of the historic city of Plymouth, the original listed building now forms the centrepiece of a mix of older and more modern facilities, developed and extended over the years. This eclectic mix of older and modern facilities will be familiar to many school pupils and teachers around the country, along with the difficulty in maintaining compliant comfort levels at different times of the year. Such buildings are notoriously difficult to heat efficiently. Paul Renyard, Business Development Manager at Plymouth High, explains: “We faced a real problem in trying to keep all areas of the school at a comfortable temperature. And our fuel bills were unnecessarily high”. The school heating and hot water system is served by a number of separate plant rooms. The main building and annexe wing of the school were equipped with large inefficient oil fired boilers. These boilers would deliver heat to a circuit of traditional cast iron radiators in the various classrooms, offices and corridors. Hot water was catered for using either traditional calorifiers in the plantrooms, or by the use of small satellite gas boilers or electric instantaneous outlets. Problem areas such as basement level classrooms and communal areas were further supported by the use of a bank of electric convector heaters which were used almost constantly during the colder periods. The school investigated a number of options to improve the efficiency of the system, and decided the best approach was the replacement of the older, unreliable oil fired boilers with high efficiency gas fired heat servers that utilised Flue Gas Heat Recovery (FGHR) technology. “We considered different renewable technologies, including solar, heat pumps and biomass” said Paul Renyard, “But the reality is that for a school like ours the financial, logistical and environmental case just didn’t stack up”. He contacted FGHR experts Blades LCS in nearby Launceston, and asked them to design an efficient gas fired solution that would integrate with existing pipework and fittings in order to minimise disruption and cost. Blades Low Carbon Systems Ltd.
01566 770799
info@bladeslcs.co.uk
www.bladeslcs.co.uk
Zenex, the Zenex logo and GasSaver are trademarks of Zenex Technologies Ltd. Copyright Blades LCS Ltd. 2012
BLCS-CS-PHSG-120514