Broughton Care Home Problem
The Broughton’s is a purpose-built, 42-bedroom care home, with 31 rooms offering private bathroom facilities. Well-Being Residential approached OKEL to explore ways to improve the reliability of heating and hot water throughout the property, while also reducing energy consumption and lowering ongoing utility costs.
Due to the age and vulnerability of many care home residents, care home providers face daily challenges in providing care facilities that perform against all the safety standards and regulations set by authorities and health officials whilst still delivering against operational/financial targets.
OKEL’s Solution
As expected, elderly people are not as active in their later years and tend to feel the cold more than others, it is therefore essential that to prevent illness care homes provide a warm and comfortable environment for residents by running heating systems 24/7 365 days a year.
As important as the need to provide heat it is also essential that care homes provide continuous supplies of temperature controlled hot water to assist with the personal hygiene of residents, staff, and visitors, and to maintain overall cleanliness throughout the care home by helping to combat germs and the spread of infectious viruses/bacteria’s such as covid-19 and legionella (the latter often associated with inadequate hot water storage).
Commercial Boilers Solution
Prior to the installation OKEL’s assigned NICEIC electrical approved engineers completed a pre installation site visit of the premises. The site visit included an inspection of the existing electrical supply to ensure there was enough capacity to accommodate the proposed far infrared heating solution and planning of the heaters positioning to deliver the most even spread of heat whilst considering the layout of the area.
For the challenges highlighted above, it is not possible for care homes to reduce the operating hours of their heating and hot water systems and therefore the only way to lower energy usage and associated energy bills is to ensure that the commercial boilers and hot water systems on-site are of the highest efficiencies and controlled by modern thermostat controls.
Due to natural aged, related wear and tear it’s estimated that a commercial boiler 15+ years in age is operating at 60% efficiency and therefore resulting in customers wasting up to 40% of the energy that they are being charged for.
To deliver a highly efficient solution OKEL chose to remove the obsolete boilers and replace them with an ATAG XL70 and XL110 fully modulating system boilers.
The ATAG XL boiler was chosen for this project for the following reasons:
- Outstanding efficiencies (99.3% gross efficiency) making the ATAG XL boiler model the most efficient commercial boiler across Europe.
- Exceptional reliability
- Stainless steel heat exchanger
- Fully modulating
- Maximum BREEAM points for low emissions
- Future Proof – The ATAG XL boiler is Hydrogen Ready and designed and capable of blending up to 20% Hydrogen with natural gas for when this greener hybrid fuel type becomes readily available throughout the UK’s gas distribution networks.
Commercial Boiler Installation and Hand Over
Given the vulnerability of the residents at The Broughton’s, staff were keen to ensure that the plant room upgrade took place in the warmer weather.
To minimise any downtime of heating / hot water OKEL’s lead engineer completed a follow-up pre-installation site visit prior to the spring installation to fully determine the best approach for the switch over to include the decommissioning and removal of the existing boilers, pipework and flue alterations and installation of the commercial boilers.
Throughout the installation, the outage was kept to an absolute minimum and care home staff notified in advance so they were able to prepare the residents and ensure that any outage did not cause interference with planned activities/day to day tasks.
All works were completed to schedule and with Gas Safe and NICEIC electrical commissioning certification issued upon project completion.
Looking for reliable commercial heating in Manchester? Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you heat your Care Home
