BUILDINGS, MAINTENANCE & REFURBISHMENT
and field instrumentation, and circulating pumps and pipework. Additionally, accessories such as air/dirt separators, a dosing pot, expansion vessels and a plate heat exchanger for hydraulic separation may be incorporated. The capacity can simply be adjusted and sized to meet the load and output requirements of different school buildings.
Through the use of a configurable controller that brings the modules and components together, a standardised packaged plant room can become an integrated heating solution for various applicable system designs. Meanwhile, prefabrication provides a high level of confidence in the quality and precision of a solution, with pre-testing and commissioning having taken place off site. Because solutions are fabricated elsewhere, the waste and carbon emissions involved in their installation is also kept to a minimum, giving a boost to schools’ sustainability targets. Through increased standardisation, therefore, the school sector can begin in earnest to decarbonise and put the UK on a strong heading towards achieving its net zero goals.
A hot topic
heat pump unit if that heat pump is being supplemented by a boiler.
Through the efficiency offered by hybrid solutions, the carbon intensity of a building’s heating can also be significantly reduced, allowing for far more sustainable operation than would otherwise be possible. While adopting a hybrid approach means, by its very nature, that a school will retain some level of reliance on gas boilers, it acts as an effective compromise for those who are currently unable to upgrade 100% of their systems with heat pumps.
Prefabrication and standardisation For local authorities and MATs seeking to implement heat pumps across a broad series of school buildings, prefabrication might hold the answer. Prefabricated heating solutions – plant rooms or energy centres containing the heating source that are built off site and then transported and installed at the final location – have soared in popularity in recent years. Given their ability to more efficiently and effectively meet rigorous performance targets for heating and hot water provision, while significantly reducing on-site installation time, it is easy to understand why.
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of prefabrication is standardisation, which could provide schools with a feasible and efficient route to decarbonising a series of buildings across their estate. Prefabrication enables decarbonisation to be scaled up considerably across the school estate through faster installation times and minimal on-site disruption, while standardisation can ultimately lead to reduced costs. This is all while retaining the ability to be customised to meet the specific output requirements of a given school building.
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A packaged plant room provides a strong example of how standardisation can benefit schools. This might contain a combination of plant and accessory modules in a uniform layout, linked up to an external monobloc air-to-water heat pump or evaporators connected to split-system heat pumps within the packaged plant room. In terms of the packaged plant room, this could include a boiler cascade, buffer vessels, control panel
The combined approach of off-site fabrication and hybrid heating solutions could provide an achievable answer to accelerating decarbonisation across the education sector. Due to the cost and energy efficiency benefits associated with this method, it provides a feasible route to decarbonisation, keeping system alterations to a minimum. As such, schools where full heat pump integration proves an especially complex task should consider how they can benefit from incorporating a hybrid approach through the aid of prefabrication.
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