boilers & cylinders Boiler pipe casing – undercover work
With the potential for local authorities and housing associations to save tens of thousands of pounds, just by changing the way heating system and boiler pipework are concealed on site, Encasement’s Managing Director, Martin Taylor, provides a detailed insight on where and how the cost can be removed from the process
will need covering for reasons of safety, in the case of hot pipes, or purely aesthetics. However, for local authorities (LA) and housing associations (HA), where they primarily deal with older housing stock, which requires upgrading and annual maintenance, the high volumes of exposed pipework for heating systems, boilers, gas, mains water and waste can present a number of challenges. Usually, due to the age of the properties and
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the nature of their construction, which predominantly uses concrete and brick, mechanical and electrical services need to be surface mounted, as they can’t easily be concealed during installation. Given that upgrading heating systems with
more energy efficient solutions in older social housing stock is important to reduce emissions and energy consumption, while improving comfort for occupants, there is also a need to ensure that the updated system is safe and looks good too. And it’s at this point where LAs and HAs
have the opportunity of either saving or wasting thousands of pounds on their annual repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI) budget, just by deciding which method to use when boxing in heating system and boiler pipework after installation.
Suffering from exposure
So how exactly can something as simple as covering exposed pipe work with pipe boxing and boiler casings have such a potentially dramatic impact on RMI budgets? Essentially, this can be broken down into
four sections: •Manufacture – How will the boxing be made?
•Materials – What materials will be used to make the boxing?
•Methods – How will the boxing be installed and secured?
•Maintenance – How easily can the boxing be removed and replaced for servicing?
Clearly, in each of the above processes, if costs can be removed or if time can be saved, then they will have a positive effect on reducing the overall budget required to achieve the end result. Encasement’s approach to product
design has always been to develop more cost effective solutions that can save time and money on site, although in recent years, the company has also taken a more holistic view, as it became clear that often, the installation processes for traditional boxing can also be
n any property, whether it’s a new build or a refurbishment project, there will inevitably be some exposed pipework that
time consuming and inevitably costly. Furthermore, when maintenance, servicing or
routine boiler inspections are required, this can also incur further costs as the boxing needs replacing or re-manufacturing after it has been removed. This issue has again influenced our thinking to develop a better and more cost effective solution. To get a better understanding of each
element, let’s explore them in a little more detail.
Manufacture
The traditional and still widely used approach for concealing pipework, is for boxing to be fabricated on site using wood or MDF together with nails, screws or adhesive, followed by a couple of coats of paint. Inevitably, this is a time intensive and costly solution, as escalating materials cost and labour rates are constantly increasing the overall cost of manufacture for each piece of boxing. In 2011, Encasement initiated an ongoing
study to quantify how much it costs to make a typical boiler pipework casing and the cost five years ago was £38. Today, this figure can regularly exceed £50, which seems excessive just to cover up some pipes. Also, there are issues with inconsistency of paint finish and
32 | HMM March 2016 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
fabrication quality, which can easily detract from an otherwise professional heating system installation. The Encasement solution is a whole lot
simpler, quicker and delivers a cost saving of around £20 on every casing installed, as it is manufactured from pre-formed plywood to exact boiler dimensions. They are also pre-finished with durable melamine or laminate, so there’s no painting required, which provides a consistent finish and saves even more time. While a £20 cost reduction on its own is a
decent saving, it makes even more financial sense when you consider that the savings reach £10,000 for every 500 properties where pre-formed casings are used.
Materials
Often the materials used to manufacture pipe boxing and boiler casings aren’t a major consideration, particularly for on-site abrication, yet they should be. Apart from the health &
safety considerations when cutting and fabricating MDF, there’s also the question of
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