Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church optimises energy control and expenditure with HeatingSave
Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church is a congregation of the Church of Scotland with sanctuary and halls in St John’s Road, Corstorphine, Edinburgh, 3 and a half miles west of the city centre.
The beautiful church was originally built around 1844, but it has undergone no less than 6 developments ever since, in response to the congregation significantly growing in numbers. The latest major segments, the east and west transepts, were added in 1914, but further work was done later on as well, in order to extend the available space.
Currently, Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church will house up to 800 parishioners during usual services, but its premises are also used for a variety of additional activities involving the local community.
The church halls are heated by 2 gas-fired boilers providing the necessary hot water for heating multiple radiators.
Mr. Lex Hope, the church’s site manager, recalls that, around 3 years ago, the church’s leaders started to consider the prospect of installing an energy management system that would enable them to “reduce energy consumption” and “adapt to the seasonal and immediate changes in outdoors temperature” while also offering “easier management” of the whole central heating system.
At the time, several Building Energy Management Systems were investigated, but “none of them, apart from HeatingSave, met our requirements in terms of outside temperature compensation”, Mr. Hope revealed.
The HeatingSave system was installed at the Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church in January 2012, and no major problems were recorded during either the hardware or software installation phases.
The HeatingSave Small Business system controlling the central heating system at Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church is controlled via a PC running the HeatingSave control software, used extensively by Mr. Hope for running various heating patters. “Yes, we do use the diary function and the heating patterns, very much so, in fact”.
“Unfortunately, due to several factors, such as rising energy bills, specific occupancy patterns and usage patterns for the central heating system, etc., I can’t really say how much HeatingSave has managed to help us save” Mr. Hope told the HeatingSave reporter. “Nevertheless, in terms of real, day-to-day usage, I’m quite sure that HeatingSave has in fact managed to reduce overall gas consumption.” he added.
When asked what he likes most about the system, Mr. Hope’s answer was “I find particularly useful its ability to react visibly and sensibly to both internal and external temperature changes, in real time. I also like the fact that I can easily program variations in the system remotely, from my computer at home, without having to stand in a poorly-lit boiler room, in front of a panel or keypad.”
HeatingSave will help cut energy consumption by not over heating a building. This is achieved by by applying adaptive outside temperature compensation using 12 different compensation curves that can be simply changed by the user.
Mr. Hope also told the HeatingSave reporter that, although he’s quite accustomed to HeatingSave’s inner workings right now, that wasn’t always the case. “For me, the system is now very easy to use. However, it took me a while to get used to all of its more in-depth features.”
Ever since the HeatingSave system was installed at the Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church, Mr. Hope did get in touch with the HeatingSave help desk service a couple of times. “I did contact the help line on 2 or 3 occasions, and they’ve always proved helpful in solving the immediate problems.”
When asked by the HeatingSave reporter whether he would recommend the HeatingSave Building Energy Management System to other site managers, Mr. Hope’s answer was that “Yes, I would, but only as long as they’re quite comfortable about using a PC and a more technology-intensive product.”
“In fact, this is the only system of this type I would actually recommend, given the range of features it delivers, provided that, as mentioned above, the user is not concerned about the more in-depth, technical part of it” Mr. Hope added.
For this reason, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Corstorphine St. Ninian’s Parish Church Manager considers extending the system to “include 2 more heating zones on the church premises”, and also get one of the HeatingSave House & Home systems for his own home.
Finally, summing up the relationship between the Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church and HeatingSave, Mr. Lex Hope said that “my experience with HeatingSave has been a very good one”.
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Customer Information
Corstorphine St. Ninian’s Parish Church
144 St John’s Road,
Corstorphine, Edinburgh,
EH12 8AY
Scotland, United Kindgom
Phone: 01313342489