Broadwater School saves oil, controls more heating zones with HeatingSave
Broadwater School is a state, secondary Specialist Mathematics and Computing College in Farncombe, near Godalming, Surrey. It has been a mixed comprehensive school since 1970, and now has approximately 600 students aged 11–16 years. Its facilities extend over four floors and takes students from year 7 to year 11 (the GCSE year).
The facilities of Broadwater School are used extensively by the local community. Classrooms, assembly hall and the specialist facilities such as the technology and food rooms are used for adult education as well as private functions. They are also a hive of musical activity, being the main centre for the South West Surrey Music Centre.
The school employs over 86 members of staff and is equipped with a central heating system powered by 3 oil-fired boilers.
Mr. Richard Williams, the school’s Site Manager, remembers that, around 2 years ago the school was thinking about installing an energy-management system that would allow them to “save oil and enjoy a superior level of temperature control over multiple zones”.
After reviewing the various available systems, the school decided to purchase a HeatingSave Small Business system to better manage the three oil-fired boilers and also improve the ability to heat different parts of the school at varying times of the day.
Due to the size of the school’s site and the location of required heating zones , the HeatingSave system installed at Broadwater school features two sub-units connected to the main controller unit, for extension purposes.
By using sub-units connected to the main HeatingSave controllers, the Building Energy Management System can support up to 40 heating zones, 50 pumps, 40 valves, 40 immersion heaters, 40 AirCon units, 100 Lights/Sounders, 150 PIR occupancy sensors and 100 temperature/light sensors.
HeatingSave engineers installed the system in early 2012, with a minimum disruption to the school’s daily activity. “Apart from a few minor software tweaks, everything went fine”, said Mr. Williams.
The Site Manager was trained on the use of the software that controls the operation. He’s very satisfied with the quality of the training, but he wanted to mention that “the basic training is quite good for everyday, normal use. However, the more advanced features, the in-depth stuff, they need a bit more time and hands-on experience. If you use the system on a daily basis, though, you’ll be able to push it to its full potential relatively quickly.”
Mr. Williams believes that “right now, we’re definitely using HeatingSave at its full potential”. More importantly, the system achieved and exceeded its primary purpose, because “according to our estimates, we’ll be saving anywhere between 15 and 18 percent on the amount of oil we’re using for our boilers”, the Broadwater School Site Manager told the HeatingSave reporter.
Due to the extensive use of the school’s facilities by the local community, the diary function built in the HeatingSave system is a very effective tool. “We’re setting a lot of different patterns for the system, depending on the activities being carried out at school, and the planned usage for each specific zone”, said the site manager.
Mr. Williams told us that what he loves most about the system is its ease of use. He added that his favorite part of the system is that he can control the heating via a remote connection. “I can simply remote into it from home, so I can monitor the heating system and also adjust parameters without having to actually be on the school grounds.”
In Mr. Williams own words :”On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 stands for a product that’s extremely easy to use and 10 for one that’s very difficult to use, I’d say that HeatingSave is somewhere around 2”.
Following a lightning strike that left a lot of the electrical equipment installed at the Broadwater School damaged, the Site Manager called the HeatingSave help desk and operations department, in order to sort out the problems. “We had to call the HeatingSave help desk on several occasions. We’ve had lots of problems due to a lightning strike, but HeatingSave helped us sort all of them out. The quality of the service delivered by both the help desk analysts and the field engineers was very good”.
When asked whether he would recommend HeatingSave to other schools, Mr. Williams answered :”Oh yes, without a doubt!”. Summing up the school’s experience of HeatingSave, the Broadwater School Site Manager concluded: “HeatingSave is a good, solid product that helps us save money. The company delivers a professional service on all levels, and always provides a very good feedback.”
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Customer Information
Broadwater School
Summers Road, Godalming, Surrey
GU7 3BW
Phone: 01483 414516
Fax: 01483 425782
Email: admin@broadwater.surrey.sch.uk