Heating & Ventilation Sponsor
Is your building winter safe?
Tyco Thermal Controls explains why
prevention is better than a cure. Winter Safety solutions in buildings have been tested to the limit in the UK’s recent cold snap and many have failed the test!
Water authorities have received emergency call from customers with frozen and burst water pipes. Heating companies have received thousands of call out requests to defrost outlet pipes from condensing boilers and heat tracing suppliers have been called to provide solutions to the almost annual problem of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. The underlying message remains the same: prevention is better than cure!
Preventative measures Building designers and owners cannot
afford to ignore the ever increasing cost of building damage and personal injury liability associated with winter weather conditions. Burst pipes, roof damage due to snow and ice, property or stock damage from melting ice, condensing boiler/heating system shutdown due to iced-up condensate pipe, and building access problems due to snow have been sharply brought into focus over the past few years. This coupled with personal injury claims means that the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of action.
Frost protection and ice and snow prevention solutions are designed specifically with winter safety in mind. Smart solutions ensure that building services, such as chilled water pipe work, are maintained unfrozen and that roofs, gutters, and drainage pipes are kept clear of ice and snow. In addition to these vital building functions, ground surface heating systems ensure that critical access ways, fire escapes, delivery bays, footpaths and building entrances are kept clear of ice and snow, greatly reducing the risk of personal injury claims or delays to
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business activities. All of this is delivered with systems and controls which give optimum performance whilst ensuring energy efficiency.
Tyco Thermal Controls’ European Product Manager, Jonathan Jones, comments, “buildings have become living things and are sensitive to severe weather just as we are. Without the correct precautions, buildings are victims of the cold weather which often affects their performance.”
Electrical engineers and contractors need to become familiar with and be advocates of such winter safety solutions, not just for new building projects, but also for existing building stock. With the harsh winters experienced over the past few years, more and more contractors are making winter safety a priority and an opportunity - but why should they?
Manufacturers and specialist heat tracing distributors provide a wealth of system specification and design support tools to enable electricians to install and commission systems with confidence and ease. The support package from manufacturers and specialists has evolved over the past years to remove the notion that heat tracing is a “dark art” known only to a few specialist contractors.
As well as training and support services, winter safety trace heating solutions have advanced to make installation quicker and easier. Smart connection devices, such as the Raychem RayClic connection system,
make bespoke system design simple and fast to install. Intuitive, menu driven control devices mean system performance settings can be made in seconds, often with the installation manual only required as backup guidance. Modular “Click ‘n’ Fit” solutions are increasing in popularity, allowing offsite modular construction to reduce project installation times, or simply making cable connection fast and simple. Modular systems are a good way to shorten installation times by eliminating the cable connection time. They are also useful for novice heat tracing installers. Heat trace heating systems and winter safety is not only reserved for large commercial and residential buildings, our homes are affected too. Therefore, more and more domestic solutions are available. Whether the entry level solutions with basic bi-metal control devices or the advanced self-regulating solutions with bespoke line sensing plug-in controls for maximum energy efficiency, a domestic solution is available for contractors and installers to offer to their customers.
www.tycothermal.com/winter
www.tomorrowsfm.com
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