Priva Blue ID S-Line and C-Line controls have been installed as part of a major BMS retrofit project at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The installation, which was part of an overall plant room refurbishment, gives the cathedral complete control over its temperature requirements from radiators/heating coils and the hot water system throughout the building.
A new front-end based on Priva UK’s integrated, web-based TC Manager, which is accessible from any PC with internet access, ensures authorised staff can change preset temperatures or on/off times at the click of a button.
St Paul’s Cathedral’s plant room equipment was in need of replacement in order to improve energy efficiency, enhance reliability and meet high heating and hot water demands. The cathedral’s existing heating system consisted of three steel shell boilers fitted in the 1960s which received a burner upgrade in the 1980s. Equipment problems occurred frequently and were fixed until the boilers finally started leaking and could not be repaired anymore.
Although deciding that an upgrade project would be the best course of action, an immediate issue came to light. The site’s 20-year-old control panel would not have the capability to adopt the new equipment being installed.
St Paul’s wanted to replace its existing boilers, hot water system and ventilation plant, thus instigating the search for a suitable BMS. The appointed M&E contractor, Bunton M&E Services, had a good relationship with Electrical and Mechanical Controls Ltd (EMC) in Norwich, which in turn is an experienced Priva installation partner.
Priva Blue ID S-Line controls were selected for the main boiler room at St Paul’s where they now control four new Hamworthy Wessex ModuMax mk3 boilers and the primary boiler pumps, which together
provide a total space heating output of up to 1,016kW. Thanks to a turndown ratio of 20:1, the boilers can deliver any output from 50.8 to 1,016kW. This means that in periods of low heat demand, the boilers are not constantly cycling and wasting energy.
In terms of the plant upgrade, Bunton M&E built everything off-site in five weeks to ensure minimal disruption. In total, the installation time on-site was condensed to just four weeks. Saving further time, it was possible to use the existing IT network (utilising Ethernet) to communicate between the main panel, Wren Suite and the BMS PC.
