Royal Veterinary College, Camden
Share
An Evomod 1000kW condensing high efficiency boiler from Ideal Commercial, comprising of four 250kW modules, has been selected to replace three oil-fired appliances at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in Camden, London, and is now providing reliable and cost-effective heating for the entire building.
The new 1000kW boiler installation was part of a plant room refurbishment at the Hobday Campus Building. The RVC wanted to switch to gas-fired rather than oil-fired heating as there has been a drive to increase energy efficiency and reduce running costs for the College – an initiative that was viewed as particularly important in the face of rising fuel costs and the prediction of another severe winter.
The heating engineer in charge of the project was Dave Snow, MD of Fast Flame Ltd., who selected the Evomod as it not only offered the high efficiencies demanded by the College, it also met a variety of challenging installation criteria. He explained, “We chose the Evomod boiler for its high energy efficiency, as well as for ease of maintenance. However, boiler location was also an important factor to bear in mind, as the plant room at Hobday Boiler House is situated in the basement. It was therefore very important that the boiler we specified featured compact dimensions that would enable us to manoeuvre it through a limited space – a challenging requirement considering the output required.”
Ideal Commercial Boilers delivered the Evomod as one unit and, once on site, each module was separated by the Fast Flame team and lowered into the basement plant room by crane before being quickly reassembled. Evomod 250kW boiler modules can be stacked up to three high; however as this installation required a total output of 1000kW, the modules were installed as two floorstanding units, each two modules high.
The installation offered an added challenge: since the College is open all year, the heating system needed to remain in operation throughout the majority of the refurbishment project. Dave and his team overcame this difficulty by removing just two of the existing oil-fired boilers and leaving one running whilst the Evomod was installed in its permanent position. Its small footprint enabled the Evomod to be positioned alongside the one remaining boiler with room to spare, greatly simplifying the whole installation procedure. The remaining boiler was removed out of hours, allowing the connections and pipework to be swiftly reconnected to the Evomod and avoiding any substantial heat loss whilst the building was occupied.
An added bonus for the college as a result of switching to a gas-fired boiler was that two enormous oil storage tanks that were previously taking up a vast amount of room could be degassed, cut into smaller sections and transferred to a waste station, resulting in a great deal of additional space.
Dave affirmed, “We have no doubt that the new plant will show savings in energy costs for the RVC, as the Evomod boiler is a high efficiency condensing model and also features a sophisticated fully modulating control system. We expect to achieve at least 20 – 25 per cent savings in fuel costs against the previous oil-fired boilers. In addition, as the Evomod is so easy to maintain, there will be far fewer maintenance costs incurred by the College.”
