Birmingham primary school prepares for winter months with help from Baxi

New Baxi Quinta Ace boilers and Megaflo hot water cylinders have been installed at Billesley Primary School in Birmingham, improving the efficiency and reliability of the heating system and supporting a comfortable learning environment for the school children and their teachers.

The requirement

Billesley Primary is part of The Elliot Foundation Academies Trust (TEFAT), a successful, charitable multi-academy trust specialising in primary academies. When the non-condensing cast iron boilers serving the school reached end of life, TEFAT was keen to explore the most efficient options for delivering reliable heating and hot water in the school buildings.

Two plant rooms required upgrading. The first plant room, which serves the Main School Building, is located in a basement plant room with restricted access via narrow stairs and a single door. The second plant room serves the smaller Early Years Building.

Lowering operational costs where possible and maximising the efficiency and reliability of the service were key requirements from the Trust. As part of the project needed to be carried out in term time, minimising disruption to the live environment and adhering to tight project deadlines were further major considerations.

The solution

M&E Consultants Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) were appointed to carry out a RIBA stage 4 design. After assessing the feasibility of installing heat pumps, the capital expenditure and operational costs associated with this approach led to TEFAT ruling it out as a viable option. TEFAT concluded that a full plant room replacement involving an upgrade to condensing boilers, around 20% more efficient than the existing cast iron units, was the most suitable solution at that point in time.

RLB undertook the detailed design for a full plant room replacement of the Main Building plant room and the Early Years plant room. Baxi’s technical design team paid several visits to site to triage the heating systems and work with RLB to propose a design that would maximise energy efficiency and reliability within the project constraints.

The approved design for the Main Building plant room, the larger of the two projects, included a cascade modular Quinta Ace boiler installation. A Megaflo cylinder, also from the Baxi range, was selected to serve the kitchen. RLB specified incorporating a plate heat exchanger to hydraulically separate the new and existing systems and protect the new equipment.