Heating & Ventilation Award For Adveco  

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Adveco, the hot water specialist for commercial building projects, has received the Company of the Year Heating & Ventilation Award from Building & Construction Review Magazine.

Building & Construction Review, is a print and digital magazine in the UK supporting more than 15,000 readers monthly.  These readers include Specifiers, Facilities Managers, Directors, Senior Buyers, Project Managers, Site Managers, and individuals involved in Buildings Management.

Shortlisted by the editorial team for technical development and product innovation throughout 2022, as well as industry engagement through sales and field service support, Adveco has been recognised for its down-to-earth, practical response to the call for carbon reduction in buildings if the UK is to achieve the government’s target of net zero by 2050.

With more than 50 years of heritage in the design, supply, and servicing of robust, efficient, and cost-effective business-critical hot water systems, Adveco has risen to the challenge of helping the construction industry deliver sustainability into new commercial buildings as well as supporting the complex demands of refurbishing existing, outdated building stock.

With a proudly independent approach to innovation of sustainable hot water for commercial and public sector organisations, Adveco’s systems encompass a range of hybrid approaches that consist of heat pumps, solar thermal, direct electric water heating as well as high-efficiency gas-fired systems. All backed by a comprehensive range of hot water cylinders, ancillaries, controls, and the option for offsite construction.

“We are extremely pleased to receive this heating & ventilation award and be named one of Building & Construction Review’s companies of the year,” said Greg Brushett, UK sales manager, Adveco. “We are a tightly focused and highly competent team of application, sales and service engineers with unprecedented heritage in the commercial hot water field. We take great pride in the close working relationships we build with the specifiers, mechanical and health engineers who help create sustainable systems and the many facility and energy managers that use them. This award recognises all their hard work over the past year to help communicate the best and most cost-effective means of addressing carbon reduction across a host of varied sites with often unique demands.”

Read more in this month’s edition of Building & Construction Review 

Packaged plant rooms for education

Prefabricated Hot Water Systems For Schools

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Prefabricated Hot Water Systems For Schools Prefabricated hot water systems for schools can drive real value from previously underutilised space as well as address the need to introduce new, more sustainable practices…

With larger class sizes demanding more extensive facilities, the most valuable assets any school can have are its internal spaces to grow, develop and drive advantage. Within the school building, this leads to a balancing act between granting usable, comfortable space for staff and pupils while meeting the demands of a building’s critical operating systems that include hot water and heating.

School plant rooms will vary from purpose-built to jury-rigged spaces used to accommodate heating and hot water systems. Basements are typically repurposed in older buildings, whilst it is not unusual to find them tucked in amongst other rooms creating a mixed-use setting. Education estates need to understand how advantageous it can be to separate such building services and relocate them away from those using the building whilst improving the efficiency of the system for a host of benefits including lower operational costs and reduced emissions.

Simply upgrading to a new boiler or electric water heater can deliver notable efficiency improvements over models from just 10 years ago, and today’s modern appliances pack that into much more compact, space-saving formats. So, you can gain greater capability from a smaller footprint in the plant room, and potentially reclaim a few square meters. But what if you could reclaim the entire plant room?

Refurbishing plant to a new location may sound drastic, but that need not be the case if we apply offsite construction. This enables the creation of modular units or systems that are sized and pre-installed and ready for relatively quick and simple connection once delivered to a site. Depending on the chosen location, such prefabricated plant rooms can be of considerable size and complexity.

Prefabricated Hot Water Systems For Schools

With production work located offsite in a controlled, purpose-made factory environment, the system build gains enhanced quality control with manufacturer assured standards. Importantly for education projects where works windows can be extremely limiting the plant room element of a project can progress at the same time as other groundworks or site installations. This work will also not be affected by any forced downtime on-site, such as from Covid outbreaks, which can quickly become a major issue for a time-sensitive school building project. Without distractions from other typical construction site activities, the plant room work can be rapidly progressed ready for delivery and final fit. Faced with narrow construction windows allowed within the school holidays, a completely new plant room can be craned into position on day of delivery. Without the need for extended plumbing and electrical installation, final connections are simplified and can be completed in a matter of days. This is not only more cost-effective, but it also helps simplify and accelerate final system commissioning.

As well as extending options for refurbishment, this approach also provides greater flexibility when designing new builds. Adveco recently designed and built a complete, prefabricated plant room for a Berkshire school. In this case, hot water and heating demands had increased due to a growing number of pupils, which in turn was limiting the incorporation of large scale plant room space within a new building. The GRP enclosure, which was sited on the new building’s flat roof, incorporated a complete integrated system built around a cascade of condensing boilers with an intelligent control system for optimised performance and continuity of service.

Flat rooftops, commonly used in school building design, are truly ‘dead space’ for most buildings, but they provide a broad opportunity to relocate heating and hot water plant safely and more securely. They are also excellent for positioning hybrid systems that integrate renewable and sustainable technologies.  By locating a packaged air source heat pump (ASHP) based system onto a rooftop, the application gains unimpeded airflow while operating noise becomes almost unnoticeable, preventing any distraction in the classroom.

Flat roofs are also perfect for the installation of solar thermal systems, where a frame is constructed to align the collectors for optimal heat collection and transference to the building’s water system. Location at height is recommended from a system security perspective because vandalism, usually because of hurled missiles, can prove highly expensive to resolve. But perhaps one of the biggest operational threats is to the efficiency of a solar thermal system, which comes in the form of heat loss from long pipe runs between collector and hot water storage. By locating the plant room on the roof, long pipe runs and resultant thermal losses are minimised helping to protect the investment.

With the proliferation of car ownership, it might at first seem unlikely that the staff car park is being underused. But the drive to encourage walking, cycling and car-sharing has had an impact, and developers who have previously pushed for more open parking space are now being challenged to repurpose some of that space. In terms of identifying functional opportunities to better leverage this space, the siting of plant fits the bill. Turing over just one or two car spaces can have a dramatic impact on the capability of heating or hot water system, providing enough square meterage to easily accommodate a mid-sized packaged plant room offering, or the space could be used to locate air source heat pumps (ASHP) that drive system sustainability whilst lowering CO₂ emissions.

Offsite construction is the perfect example of where application design, system prefabrication and expertise in hybrid and renewable technology can help maximise underutilised space on an education project. Prefabricated hot water systems for schools are one of the easiest ways to combine the latest in commercial ASHP technology with high-efficiency direct electric water heaters, or solar thermal with gas-fired appliances to provide reliable high-temperature water in a convenient, packaged system that delivers truly sustainable applications that demand less fuel, reducing emissions and lowering ongoing operational costs. That is a core demand for any education estate manager faced with driving sustainability in buildings within the limits of often tight budgets.

Discover more about packaged plant rooms and sustainable systems for education buildings from Adveco.

Commercial Hot Water from Adveco

Commercial Hot Water – Sizing Matters

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24/7 domestic hot water (DHW) supply is, without a doubt, a business-critical service for many commercial projects. Unfortunately, oversizing of these commercial hot water systems is a surprisingly common occurrence, leading to higher capital costs, demands for more space, more complex system builds, longer installs, and higher fuel bills for the life of the system.

As we push towards Net Zero, large scale commercial renovation of properties to address emissions across the UK is a given. Faced with inherently more complex replacement systems, correct sizing should be a core aim and a prime opportunity to address costly oversized systems that unnecessarily contribute to building emissions.

Oversized systems can typically be attributed to the use of online sizing programmes, which are often treated as a simple DIY option. The problem is that for commercial projects faced with DHW systems that have many variables and decisions on diversity, sizing programmes will typically oversize to prevent perceived hot water problems. When specifying a commercial hot water system, sizing should be based on the anticipated demand of the building (based on BS EN 12831-3). Within Part L of the Building Regulations (Conservation of fuel and power) for England & Wales is the demand that systems are not “significantly oversized,” but we would argue any oversizing will have a negative impact on the efficiency and operational costs of a DHW system. So accurate sizing is critical in terms of delivering an optimal thermal efficiency assessment.

Under Part L, the assessment of a commercial hot water system is deemed to include the heat generator and any integral storage vessel but will exclude all secondary pipework, fans, pumps, diverter valves, solenoids, actuator and supplementary storage vessels from the calculations. Despite this simplification, oversizing still occurs and this inherently comes from a lack of understanding of different types of the hot water system, how they fit in the design software and the way that fluctuating demand for hot water impacts these systems at peak.

Of course, the flip side of the problem is under-sizing a project. A system is going to be undersized if the water temperature drops to less than 45°C. That happens when there is a failure to correctly assess factors including maximum occupancy; colder incoming water during winter months; and all people wanting to use water in the peak hour. Such a failure of a hot water application it is fair to say is more unusual today as it typically only occurred with older model calorifiers.

Dynamic and Static Storage in Commercial Hot Water

When sizing a water system, the first thing to understand is the difference between a dynamic direct water heater system (with 20 minutes reheat) versus static storage (with a two hour heat up). Difficult to undersize, a dynamic water heater with high heat input and low storage will provide a 20 to 30 minute heat-up time and will not be designed to go cold. Static storage, with a calorifier, can be undersized. Designed to dump then reheat, these systems will have a small heat input, but offer a large volume store, meaning it can take up to two hours to reheat. Anytime the system draws hot water at a faster rate than can be heated to 44°C complaints are going to occur once the initial store is gone. At the opposite end of the scale, with a dynamic system, over design of the flow rate (by as much as 45%) is unlikely to cause complaints. At least not from shower using occupants!

The simplest assumptions, such as the use of pillar taps rather than mixers or designing for a high percentage of baths rather than showers can lead to oversizing. It is also important to recognize that a gas-fired water heater is not a storage vessel. Under the EN89 seasonal efficiency test an indirect tank has storage losses that should be input into SBEM calculation. However, standing losses of the water heater are already included, if this figure is entered the losses are doubled up, which will cause the hot water system to fail analysis. This in turn commonly leads to systems being unnecessarily oversized to address the “failure”.

Understanding Commercial Hot Water Peak Periods

The second core requirement for correct sizing is understanding occupancy. Determined by the number of people and the type of building, the peak period represents the amount of hot water used in a period of time. “Peak Hour” as it is often referred to can, in reality, be any length of time, from just 15 minutes to continuous for eight hours, and range from normal to intensive use. For example, a hotel might reflect a normal usage curve, with peaks of demand in the morning for occupants showering, then over lunch and dinner from the restaurant. Offices will show a lower, but continuous demand, cinemas intensive spikes.

So, sizing needs to be based on occupancy to accurately determine peak volume and peak length. This understanding and how it influences the commercial hot water system is critical when sizing and why it is so important that sizing be carried out based on experience, test data, and supported by IOP/CIBSE G regulation. Modern dynamic systems will supply demand through a combination of storage and burner power. If the peak hour has been correctly identified, then a system will supply all other demand periods without needing to be oversized.

Safely sized, and reducing unnecessary costs

Simply put, oversizing is down to a lack of good design and a tendency to err on the side of caution by including additional factors of safety. The drive to integrate greater sustainability into commercial hot water systems in the form of Solar Thermal and lower temperature Air Source Heat Pumps increases the complexity of systems and by default the chances of oversizing when using sizing programmes. From our perspective, all commercial sizing should be carried out with a 60°C supply and 10°C designed incoming cold mains temperature. These are temperatures optimised for commercial supply, storage and cleaning, as opposed to personal use (showering and bathing) which requires temperatures of 43°C.

Talk to your contractor/supplier to ensure they use or have access to specialist sizing guides which include sufficient factors of safety to not need to ever oversize. At Adveco, we have created our own in-house sizing guides and our application team can design, recommend and supply systems for all your commercial water heating projects. It is only when corners are cut, and reliance is placed on automated sizing programmes that we see projects suffer with what should be avoidable build and operating costs.

Adveco commercial hot water and heating.

Get in touch today about correctly sizing your commercial hot water application

Alternatively call Adveco on 01252 551 540 to discuss your requirements.

Planning Change Ushers In Restaurant Refurbishment Challenge.

Planning Change Ushers In Restaurant Refurbishment Challenge

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From the beginning of September 2020, changes to planning will see use classes A1 (shops), A2 (financial and professional services), A3 (restaurants) and B1 (offices) merged to create a new Class E. This will enable use of these spaces to be altered from one use to another or undergo change to multi-use venue without seeking consent from local authorities.

The simplification of planning creates several fascinating new opportunities. For pop-up and permanent restaurants, the opportunity is clear, especially for restaurant chains that have specialised in refurbishing existing High Street buildings. That said, the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant sector cannot be discounted, so it remains to be seen how the demand for new restaurants in city centres will play out. There is strong evidence to suggest that ‘stay at home’ workers are now looking for more local venues to eat out, instead of opting for city centre locations which typically would have been a popular destination for commuting workers. This has the potential for rapid development of restaurants in more suburban locales where available properties have typically been former pubs. Pubs themselves remain exempt from these planning changes, and should a restaurant utilise one of these new spaces then it will require permission from local authorities to operate takeaways or to sell alcohol from the premises. Other locations could adopt a multi-use model, shifting from business space in the day to restaurant in the evening, or operating a full time mixed-business usage within a larger building.

These changes are seen as a key opportunity to revitalise the High Street, but the one thing we know well at Adveco is the potential complexity, and therefore hidden cost, of refurbishing a property when the site was not originally conceived as a restaurant. Landlords and new property owners need to recognise that heating and especially hot water are business critical functions, with suitable hot water storage needed to meet consistent and peak-hour demands. That water also must be supplied at a minimum of 60°C to ensure a hygienic cleaning of the environment, utensils and provide handwashing for both staff and customers.

Adveco has 50 years of experience delivering commercial heating and hot water refurbishment projects. We will size the needs of the premises, design a bespoke application, and supply the necessary system components, and ensure it is commissioned for use and serviced to manufacturer’s quality as part of the warranty.  You can discover more about our recent work refurbishing systems in listed buildings and our work for Five Guys revitalising building hot water systems throughout the UK. In all these cases, our customers are not only securing modern, highly efficient fit-for-purpose heating and hot water systems, they are also reducing their costs and either better controlling their carbon emissions or excising them with renewables for a more sustainable workplace.

HVR Awards finalist - sustainable product of the year: Heat recovery unit and commercial heating product of the year: MD boiler range.

Adveco named finalist in the 10th Anniversary Heating & Ventilation Review Awards

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  • HR001 Heat Recovery Unit named finalist in Sustainable Product of the Year
  • MD Boiler Range named finalist in Commercial Heating Product of the Year

Adveco is proud to announce it has been named finalist in two categories in this, the tenth anniversary of the Heating & Ventilation Review (HVR) Awards.

The HVR Awards celebrate the products, brands, businesses and people that have led the way with their innovation and unrivalled levels of excellence, inducting them into the prestigious HVR Awards ‘Hall of Flame’.

Named finalist in the Sustainable Product of the Year category, the Adveco HR001 is a standalone Heat Recovery Unit providing a convenient, packaged unit to recover refrigerant system waste heat.

HR001 Heat Recovery UnitPerfect for commercial organisations that make use of large chiller or refrigeration technology as part of their day to day operations, such as restaurants and large scale catering facilities in hotels, schools or universities, and retailers holding frozen stock, the HR001 connects between fridge and freezer condenser units and a hot water installation. The HR001 utilises the waste heat generated by the compressor to indirectly pre-heat the incoming mains within a hot water installation and is capable of achieving temperatures as high as 50°C.

In the Commercial/Industrial Heating Product of the Year category, Adveco’s MD Boiler range, powered by Cosmogas, has also been named as a finalist.

The Adveco MD range of high-efficiency floor-standing condensing gas boilers units has been designed for commercial applications requiring consistent, very efficient and low emission heating for business-critical projects.

The range is composed of four boilers, with heat inputs from 70 to 280 kW and offers a heating temperature range of 20 – 80°C and is suitable for use with system pressures designed to provide a high capacity, reliable response to a building’s central heating demand.

Perfect for refurbishment of existing gas boiler systems where space is limited, the MD is also a core element of Adveco’s bespoke hybrid offerings to provide sustainable heating systems that can deliver the operational responsiveness required by larger-scale commercial systems.MD Boiler range

Adveco supplies MD boilers across a range of commercial sectors including hotels and leisure centres, restaurants, care estates, education estates, light industrial and government organisation facilities.

“As a proudly independent UK business with almost 50 years of heritage in the design, supply and servicing of business-critical systems we are extremely pleased to be recognised as finalists in this, the tenth anniversary year of the HVR Awards,”

said David O’Sullivan, managing director, Adveco.

“To have our expertise in sustainable systems for commercial heating highlighted in two awards feels like a win already. It’s a testament to our expert team who work so closely with our partners and customers to create and deliver bespoke applications for modern commercial operations. The MD boiler range and HR001 Heat Recovery Unit are both prime examples of this fantastic work.”

See all the 2019 finalists here.

 

Packaged plant room being installed (Prefabricated plant room).

Adopting a Streamlined Approach for Commercial Building Projects

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As we fast approach the deadline for Brexit, the industry supporting the built environment, from construction to maintenance is braced for change. One key concern will be a widening skills gap, with the potential loss of skilled workers. Some have cited as many as one in five roles within construction alone will likely remain unfilled in the near to mid-term. In an industry that is already facing an engineering skills shortfall and interest in STEM subjects at schools struggling to gain the necessary traction to deliver enough apprentices and graduates to fulfil the industry’s future needs, practical responses are needed now to overcome threatened shortages of expert staff.

The other key post Brexit concern is undoubtedly the belief that costs will rise, at least initially, under new import tariff structures. Given that almost a quarter of parts and fixings used across built environment projects are currently sourced from the EU, there is bound to be an impact on a project’s bottom line.

So, the question is how can you mitigate costs on a project when faced with a loss of skilled onsite labour? One answer, and one that the Government supports, is the further development of offsite manufacture to streamline and modernise processes.

Offsite construction, or pre-fabrication, is a tried and tested way of bringing mechanical and electrical systems to a live construction site, countering the challenges of complexity, limited space, limited time and the need to work around other contractors. Under the post-Brexit scenario, offsite represents a practical way to address rising costs as well as a shortfall of experience on site.

Adveco has for many years specialised in the creation of bespoke systems and applications for the commercial built environment. It will size, design, and manufacture to order Packaged Plant Room enclosures suitable for placement beside or on top of buildings with a flat roof space. The plant room contains a variety of environmental systems for generating, managing and recovering energy for heating and domestic hot water (DHW) systems. With the increasing expectations on the built environment to be sustainable and show active efforts to reduce emissions during both construction and throughout the operational life of the building, offsite construction of low carbon power systems can be a particularly attractive response.

Manufacturing hot water, heating and low carbon systems away from the job in our purpose-built facility ensures improved production with optimal conditions provided for quality control and a reduction in wastage that can be found on a typical construction site.

Packaged plant room being lifted into position (Prefabricated plant room).Offsite construction, of course, makes things once on site much easier. When delivered to the project location, the plant room module can be easily sited, requiring just external pipework and final electrical connections to be completed. Those with the expertise to manage the final install are able to do so quickly and move onto other tasks more rapidly. Optimising the time of skilled workers accelerates project timelines which in turn can help offset other increasing costs that a project may now face.

Learn more about the advantages and the wide range of options available for creating a bespoke packaged plant room for your project in this helpful booklet (PDF).

Island Life Awaits

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Mixed emotions as we bid a fond farewell to Chris and Natalie Howcroft, who after 40 combined years service at Adveco set off for a new life in the Greek Islands. They leave big shoes to fill in the engineering and service departments respectively.

Whilst Natalie’s heart is set on discovering the perfect Greek farmer’s cottage to renovate, Chris, as expected, has his eyes on a small boat and the potential for long peaceful hours of fishing!

 

 

 

 

 

Bon voyage and very best wishes for the future from the entire team.

Harnessing the power of off-site construction

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Adveco’s Packaged Plant Room brochure explains the advantages of relocating essential heating and hot water services to increase the availability of valuable internal areas, accelerate project timescales, improve quality of installation and substantially reduce on-site labour.

With a wide product offering and experience in full system design, Adveco provides a single source of supply for the delivery of complete heating and hot water systems precisely tailored, built and delivered to fit the specific needs of your project.

You can download a digital copy of the new brochure here.

UK framework sets agenda for building and construction sector to police its carbon emissions

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Despite the cited success of reduction of emissions in line with the Government’s Carbon Budgets, we are well aware that much of this success has come from easy wins, such as closing operations at coal-burning power stations. The final push to zero carbon by 2050 is the real challenge, as the gap between effort/expenditure and results narrows.

The clear agenda is to adhere to a course of action that curbs global greenhouse gas emissions so that temperature rise remains ideally below 1.5 degrees Celsius within the established timeframe.

To achieve a state of zero carbon emissions requires those with a significant role in global energy consumption and the associated emissions to come to a consensus agreement on tackling the issue. The building and construction sector is currently responsible for around 30% of global energy consumption, and here in the UK there is encouraging new action to drive an ambitious transformation of the industry with co-ordinated action towards delivering 100% net zero carbon buildings by 2050.

The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has developed a framework definition for net zero carbon buildings to begin to provide direction for addressing whole life carbon in the industry and clarity on action to achieve net zero carbon across the UK built sector.

The first phase of this work has set the scope of the work required by the industry which can be accurately measured. The UKGBC has set out two clear approaches, net zero carbon construction, and net zero carbon operational energy. In the coming decade, the intent is to develop and ensure these approaches become enshrined within industry protocols.

To reduce construction impacts the framework proposes a whole life carbon assessment should be undertaken and disclosed for all construction projects to drive carbon reductions. The carbon impacts from the product and construction stages should be measured and then offset at practical completion.

To reduce operational energy use, the framework proposed reductions in energy demand and consumption be prioritised over all other measures. In-use energy consumption should be calculated and publicly disclosed on an annual basis with an increase in renewable energy supply and on-site renewable energy source prioritised. Off-site renewables should demonstrate additionality and any remaining carbon must be offset to achieve net zero using a recognised offsetting framework and the amount of offset used should be publicly disclosed.

The framework has been presented as a starting point, with the next ten years seeing the scope and ambition of the framework increased to encourage greater action.

In the short-term, additional requirements will be introduced to challenge the industry, including minimum energy efficiency targets and limits on the use of offsets.

In the longer term, the two approaches for construction and operational energy will be integrated into a broader approach for net zero whole life carbon, covering all of the emissions associated with the construction, operation, maintenance and demolition of a building.

Discover more at https://www.worldgbc.org

The Advantages of Packaged Plate Heat Exchangers

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The Adveco PPN and PPS ranges are packaged plate heat exchanger systems designed to provide an instantaneous (PPN) or semi-storage (PPS) supply of domestic hot water to a commercial building.

Plate heat exchangers can be employed as a system break between old and new heating systems; used as a separation between systems due to pressure limitations or as an integration with renewables. Consisting of an alternating ‘sandwich’ of thin hollow metal sheets with passageways for different sources of liquid – for example, one with heating water and the other with DHW. The plates keep the fluids separated, and as it spreads across the planes of the adjacent plate heat is exchanged. PPN and PPS appliances support heat transfer capacities from 100 to 600 kW.

Constructed from gasketed stainless steel, Adveco Packaged Plate Heat Exchangers are supplied pre-assembled with pumps, pipework, controls, and valves on a metal skid base. This approach reduces design requirements and on-site assembly time for the M&E installer, supporting simple separation or pressure break systems, as well as systems with different temperature requirements between ‘side one’ and ‘side two’. The proven design guarantees a fast response to changes in the DHWS demand, plus accurate and close temperature control with easy to use purpose-built integrated controls.

Adveco Packaged Plate Heat Exchangers are compact, despite the extremely large surface area for heat exchange, so are easy to locate and access within the plant room for maintenance. Smooth surfaces with high turbulence created by the complex pattern of passageways within the plates help to also create a self-cleaning action for less fouling and scaling.

PPN Packaged Plate Heat Exchanger from Adveco - rear viewWater content is also low (so there is less water to treat periodically) and fast moving under pressure. With no static water bacterial growth within the plate system is virtually eliminated. The gasketed design means the system is also easy to disassemble to clean and maintain.

Critically, the gasketed design ensures there is no cross-contamination between the two fluids, so it is a perfect response when integrating new and old systems. By easily adding extra plates, a system can be expanded to meet the specific requirements of a project or application.

The Adveco PPN and PPS ranges are WRAS approved products that are suitable for use with DHW systems up to 99°C and 6-10 bar.

Discover more about Adveco’s Packaged Plate Heat Exchangers.