Day 42: First Installations
The first flats are receiving their installations today. The installation teams are operatives from J Tomlinson who have worked with us on a previous award winning project.
The installation is a 3 day process:
Day 1:
We remove the old hot water tank from the flat then drill through to the flats below to allow access for the ground side pipe work. The 63mm pipes are also ran up the outside and fed into a manifold which feeds off to individual flats heat pumps. The pipes are insulated and pressure tested.
Day 2:
Plumbers from J Tomlinsons arrive first thing and remove the old night store heaters and refit with a double panel conventional wet radiator. The shoebox 6kw is installed in the cylinder cupboard with a shelf fitted to receive the new highly insulated hot water cylinder.
Day 3:
Electricians wire the heat pump and associated fittings including a time clock and thermostat for full temperature and time control. An electric meter is installed to monitor how much energy the heating system has used; we can use these readings along with the heat meters to accurately calculate the performance of the heat pumps. Within the attic of the topfloor flat we will fit a GSM communicate module, th is collates data from the meters in the block of three flats and sends data to a designated email address.
Site supervisors from Tomlinsons begin purging the ground array first thing in the morning,once all the air is remove d from the array the antifreeze is added, with a target concentration of 22.5% resulting in a frost protection of -10. Once all the systems have been filled and purged the systems get commissioned and handed over to the resident. The first handover will take place tomorrow.
Project in a nutshell
- Design and install communal ground source heat pump systems into two blocks of three-storey flats
- Drill 40 boreholes to an average depth of 140m
- Manifold the boreholes to 12 individual ground arrays
- Trench back to the 60 flats
- Remove old inefficient night store heaters and hot water cylinder
- Replace with a Kensa Shoebox 6kW, a highly efficient hot water cylinder and a wet radiator system
- Install thermostatic and time controls to allow total control for residents with individual heat requirements
Read more about the background to this project here: https://www.kensacontracting.com/live-retrofit-project-blog-follow-trent-doves-latest-gshp-scheme/
