Company profile
Martin Lowe
Making Britain’s buildings better
Joint managing director of Marflow Hydronics, Martin Lowe, believes there is room for improvement in how we put buildings together in Britain
The benefits are said to be fewer components need to be ordered for a project and assemblies can help optimise flow and tempera- ture in a building, potentially reducing wasted energy in unoc- cupied or rarely used spaces.
solutions provider delivers work- able solutions for water distribu- tion systems in the HVAC Industry – prefabricated where possible – in order to make installation simpler and more cost effective. But Martin says the way build- ings are put together in Britain is not always the most economical way. “It’s fraught with problems, the idea is that you get bits of a jigsaw puzzle bring them on site and then click them all together.” “You couldn’t build a car the same way we build a building. There should be some standardisa- tion of the valve assemblies we put together and we are trying to introduce this standard now.”
Core products
Marflow Hydronics supplies products that evenly distribute water throughout a building to the design requirements and then deals with the flow requirements throughout that building and through the design.
It supplies three differing types of PICVs in sizes ranging from DN15 to DN150 – Axial PICV, Rotary PICV and Dynamx Electronic Balancing, and Martin says it is the only company which supplies all three. The three PICV types each has different applications and Marflow Hydronics can offer specialist knowledge on where you would use one as opposed to the other, what the product does and how it fits the system, how it can be used, what you can and shouldn’t do. Its portfolio includes the Xterminator range of valve assemblies and Manifold Systems for which it has a number of different designs to suit different applications.
The company runs extensive CPD courses covering its product ranges and how they can be applied.
14 | September 2014 | HVR Daily news update at
www.heatingandventilating.net
“I have spent hours and hours on buildings trying to help with the commissioning process to try to find out where things have gone wrong, so if we had our way we would invest more time planning how things are going to go together.”
Martin believes that with pre- fabrication, where Marflow Hydronics’ valve assemblies are pre-built to send to site, there is a lot more planning involved which saves time in the long run while also reducing the risk of installa- tion problems occurring on site. Marflow Hydronics’
Xterminator valve assemblies are pre-assembled,
pre-tested and individually tagged and labelled.
Knowledge is key: Marflow Hydronics’ slogan is “Fulfilling solutions through knowledge”, and Martin believes this is what gives them the edge against their competitors. “As we come out of recession, everyone who hasn’t spent anything on buildings in recent years is now contemplating moving to new offices to take advantage of the latest technology. “But if we suddenly move into a new era of new products and new ideas, we also need to get that understanding out there of what these new products are, what they do and how we can implement them. “We believe we are in tune with how the industry is changing and the technological advances now available and we have the knowledge and understanding on the ramifications of using certain products in certain applications. Marflow Hydronics has a definitive guide on pressure inde- pendent control valves which can be downloaded for free and it is planning to publish a similar guide on electronic balancing.
A thousand issues of the defin- itive guide were produced last year and the company is getting ready to give out another 1,000 at CPDs to designers, installers, or anyone involved in commission- ing or involved the water distribu- tion system in some way. The guide talks about how the valves work, how to design them into a system and how you would commission it. “We need to get this informa- tion into everybody’s head includ- ing the maintenance man,” who would ultimately be the point man when the building is handed over but may not have the required level of training and knowledge in the complicated systems involved that he needs.
Success at Marflow Marflow Hydronics has consistently increased it’s turnover year on year achieving double digit growth every year. “We grew year on year through- out the recession because people are always looking for an innova- tive product to do things in a dif- ferent way and make things easier. “We have also been able to
learn from our customers and what people are looking for and we have honed our designs and our ideas.”
In addition to this Marflow Hydronics has made some strate- gic appointments in the areas of
Electronic balancing
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