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Installation of New Energy Efficient Heating System
A
revolutionary heating system that protects vulnerable residents is
to be installed in a flagship eco-village development in Greater
Manchester.
City West Housing Trust’s £14.3 million Barton Village scheme in
Eccles will become one of the first developments in the UK to use
the groundbreaking EcoPod technology, following a partnership
between the Trust and Warrington-based Belfry Group.
The EcoPod Heating System was designed by Belfry Managing Director
Keith Rimmer to alleviate fuel poverty in high-rise tower blocks.
As well as reducing fuel costs and carbon emissions by more than 40
per cent, it also features an innovative Building Management System
(BMS), which automatically alerts landlords when ‘at risk’ tenants
fail to adequately heat their properties.
Colette McKune, Director of Asset Management at City West Housing
Trust, said: “Barton Village is a flagship regeneration project and
we have been looking for innovative solutions in a number of
different areas, not least on the heating side.
“In the past we have had fuel poverty issues in our blocks so we
knew we had to develop a renewable strategy that was going to
provide a solution for our tenants.
“This solution from Belfry enables us to heat properties at a cost
that tenants can more readily afford so we are addressing the fuel
poverty issue head on.
“Crucially, it also alerts us automatically when vulnerable
residents are not using heating and hot water, which is a great
early warning mechanism, particularly in the winter months when
outside temperatures plummet.
“This will help us educate tenants on energy efficiency and
significantly reduce their fuel bills.”
City West has been working in partnership with Cambridge University
to carry out an Energy Demand Assessment of the Trust’s stock with a
PhD engineering student living periodically in a flat at Barton
Village studying how tenants’ behaviour affects energy efficiency.
The study found a number of tenants were only heating one room or
not to the optimum temperature and recommended the EcoPod system be
installed to overcome this.
At present electric storage heaters are used to heat flats at Barton
Village but they are expensive to run and that puts tenants off
using them.
However, they are about to be replaced by an EcoPod cascade boiler
system, which is far more energy efficient and cheaper to use.
In practical terms it means tenants will only use heat and domestic
hot water when required because the heat disruption units have a
heat meter installed, which is monitored via Belfry’s bespoke
web-based Building Management System.
Colette McKune said: “We’ve had problems with voids in our blocks
due to damp and mould so we recently partnered with Cambridge
University as part of its Energy Efficient Cities Initiative
project, which is designed to help reduce carbon emissions and
provide an asset management tool with detailed information about the
costs, risks and benefits of possible retrofit actions.
“As part of that study we based a student in one of our buildings
and he collected data on electrical usage, what temperatures tenants
were heating their properties to, what rooms they were heating etc.
“What those studies found was a number of tenants were only heating
one room, or they were only heating the room to 16 degrees, mainly
due to costs, which went some way to explaining some of the issues.
“Now, thanks to the EcoPod, some of those problems could be
resolved.
“The beauty of the Building Management System is it not only
monitors the EcoPod, it also monitors the usage.
“At the moment a lot of our customers are on pre-payment cards or
they get billed direct.
“Ultimately, those who are on pre-payment can end up paying more for
their electricity.
“However, what Belfry have developed is a multi-billing platform
that allows landlords to select the billing and payment method for
each tenant.
“It also features a ‘top up’ facility which enables tenants to
increase their credit from the comfort of their own home, either
through the internet or via their mobile phones.”
Keith Rimmer, from Belfry, added: “City West are setting new
standards in the social housing sector with Barton Village, both in
terms of the quality of the fit-out and the materials they are using
and the innovate things they are doing around renewable technology.
“Once they saw the EcoPod, and some of the cost savings it can
deliver, they knew they had to incorporate it at Barton Village
because there isn’t another product like it on the market.
“We recently fitted one in Hyde and the results were remarkable.
“It was a 16-storey tower block, with 96 apartments plus tenant
areas, and on one day earlier this year it cost just £12.90 to
provide heating and hot water for the whole building, which worked
out at 13 pence per apartment.
“We also managed to dramatically reduce the building’s carbon
footprint, reducing CO2 emissions from 160,000kg to 69,000kg.”
Belfry’s EcoPod has already won a number of awards, including
‘Project of the Year’ and ‘Environmental Initiative of the Year’ at
the H and V Awards in London, which is the equivalent of The Oscars
for the heating and ventilation industry. |
