Project: Colmore Gate – Floor Standing Boilers Meet High Rise Demands

Lochinvar has supplied four high efficiency floor standing boilers to the newly refurbished 26-storey Colmore Gate mixed use office and retail building in Birmingham.

Key equipment supplied

4x TTB580 – gas-fired high efficiency floor standing boilers

 

Project details

 

Refurbishment of 26-storey mixed-use office and retail building Colmore Gate, Birmingham

 

Description

 

Lochinvar’s boilers were installed by Oasis Mechanical Services to provide heating for the whole 26-storey building as part of a system designed by Cundall’s Birmingham office. They selected the Lochinvar boilers to replace 30-year-old atmospheric units so the heating requirements of the building would be provided more efficiently.

 

Oasis was founded in Manchester in 1996 as an air conditioning specialist but has since expanded rapidly to become a nationwide multi-service heating and cooling contractor. Cundall is one of the UK’s foremost multi-disciplinary engineering practices and was established over 40 years ago. It now operates out of 20 offices worldwide.

 

The TTB models modulate during operation and having four installed in sequence means a large system like this is still able to respond quickly and precisely to changes in demand while minimising energy use.  This is a very useful feature in a building occupied by multiple tenants with long, varied working hours.

 

The fact that Lochinvar was able to deliver the four boilers in less than six weeks was another important consideration as it helped the team meet tight project timescales.

 

Reliability

 

The four TTB580 fully condensing, gas-fired, stainless steel boilers each provide outputs up to 576kW and can operate at 95.5% efficiency. They were chosen by the project team because of their high efficiency and outputs as well as the reliability offered by the triple chamber stainless steel heat exchangers.

 

In addition, they feature onboard controls and twin burners providing built-in standby. All models in the TTB range produce low NOx emissions and are suitable for a wide variety of commercial and industrial heating applications.

 

Access to the plantroom was difficult so the fact that the TTBs are compact and relatively lightweight, considering their outputs, was a major bonus for the contractor. The installation team also found them easy to manoeuvre because they are fitted with castors for ease of handling and positioning avoiding the need for lifting equipment.

 

Another challenge the project team had to overcome was that the original heating system was designed around traditional boilers with high water content. In modernising the system to improve performance, the design team have switched to low water content boilers. Therefore, the contractors also created primary and secondary pipework loops that give the boilers additional protection from potential sediment build up in the waterways to ensure excellent ongoing operation.

 

“We were impressed by the high efficiency performance of the Lochinvar boilers and their ability to meet some of the quite tricky challenges posed by this design,” said Cundall’s project lead Martyn Wilkinson, who is a director in the company’s Birmingham office.

 

“We have worked with Lochinvar before and highly value their design input and ability to respond quickly to demanding briefs,” he added. “The occupants of this newly refurbished building will quickly see the benefits of adopting the very latest in high performance and low emissions heating equipment.”

 

Oasis was similarly impressed by Lochinvar’s technical and logistical support adding that the compact design of the boilers and the ability to move them on castors helped enormously in overcoming some of the access problems posed by the plant room.

 

They also cited long-term reliability and ease of maintenance as major plus points.

 

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