Case Study: Plant Room for School

Learning a Valuable Lesson When Securing New Heating

Adveco Packaged Plant Room for School

Creating a modern, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable hot water & heating system is not just advantageous, it is increasingly becoming a demand as the United Kingdom transitions towards a more environmentally friendly Net Zero nation by 2050. This process of modernisation can be especially challenging for school sites.

Adveco has designed and built a full prefabricated plant room at a school in Berkshire, providing the new school building with a modern hot water and heating system situated inside a self-contained rooftop plant room. Adveco’s packaged plant rooms are the easiest way to achieve the maximum potential within the limited space schools have available whilst also keeping costs and time of projects reduced with off-site construction.

Adveco’s Packaged Plant Rooms are the easiest way to achieve the maximum potential within the limited space schools have available.

Designed to address the heating and domestic hot water (DHW) demands of the building, the prefabricated GRP enclosure incorporates a complete, integrated system built around a cascade of seven A.O. Smith Upsilon UB 110 and UB140 condensing boilers. Installed in a side-by-side configuration on a supporting framework, the UB boilers are highly efficient (up to 110.3%), very low gas usage boilers with very low emissions (NOx class 5). Fitted with an intelligent control system, the boilers’ performance is optimised through a process of infinite modulation. The UB boiler was also an optimal choice for the school, with built-in redundancy ensuring system operation and continuity of service.

The plant room primary system also incorporates a bespoke Adveco MSS 2000 carbon steel buffer vessel. Carefully designed to fit any heating application that requires an inertia tank or energy storage vessel, this 2000-litre vessel provides multiple level tappings enabling compatibility with almost any heating application. Supporting multiple return flow temperatures or multiple heat sources, the MSS is perfect for integrating low or high-grade heaters, including renewables, to supply preheat and drive further sustainability from the system. With heating coils rated to 9 bar working pressure, the MSS is suitable for use with glycol fluids for solar thermal or heat pump installations. Designed to accept preheated water, the MSS 2000 connects to the Upsilon 110 cascade and the buildings heating system.

In this case, the demands for heating and hot water for an increasing number of pupils, combined with the limitations of incorporating large scale plant room space within the new building was a key issue. Typically, schools also face limitations in terms of when work can be carried out on site. If a works window is especially narrow it can preclude larger scale project work. Adveco supplied within the weatherproof enclosure the integrated cascade and thermal storage, alongside an expansion vessel, dosing pot, pipework, insulation, flueing and all controls ready to be craned into position. Final electrical and plumbing connections took a matter of days.

Working with Adveco helped the school achieve timely project delivery through proper co-ordination of application design, securing of equipment and controls and post-installation commissioning works. By relocating essential building services into this rooftop packaged plant room, not only were demands able to be met, but valuable internal areas could now be released within the school’s new building.