Woodlands Junior School in Kent cuts its oil bills thanks to HeatingSave

Woodlands Junior School in Tonbridge, Kent, teaches approximately 380 boys and girls from the ages of 7-11, and employs about 60 staff.

Its two oil fired Riello boilers which provided hot water and heating to the older part of the school were proving costly for fuel bills, especially now oil prices are sky-high. Headteacher Mary Priestley and the school governors needed to make savings and, after being in contact with us, a HeatingSave Building Energy Management system was installed at the establishment in 2009.

Site Manager Brian Hine said there were no problems with the installation. He commented, “It’s a good system. Before we had HeatingSave I noticed the boilers were constantly on all day long. The old system failed to heat the water and the temperature wasn’t getting up to 60 degrees”.

He added, “HeatingSave properly manages the heating with the temperature sensors allowing us to make sure everything works and by doing that it is saving us money.”

Install and forget is the principle of HeatingSave as its internal computer constantly calculates and improves the efficiency and savings of a central heating system by learning the heat-loss profile of the school buildings. Given like-for-like conditions, it can save 30% or more off fuel bills.

Brian explained that the boiler efficiency is much improved thanks to HeatingSave, “Under the old boiler control system in the summer and warm days in spring and autumn, I could always hear the boiler come on and it would take an hour and a half to get going in the morning. Now the boiler is hardly on during these periods.”

Brian described how he gets full use out of the powerful Building Energy Management System by using the PC link provided. “I particularly like the animated displays and graphs” he said. “They are very useful and I look at them every day as I like to see exactly what it going on. You can see what the temperatures are, and when the system is on or off.”

Brian’s described as “handy” the PC software features such as the diary function, which is used frequently to match the heating to the school’s use. Of the automatic engineering features he remarked, “Beforehand I don’t think the boiler used frost protection, which was taking a chance, especially around Christmas time. HeatingSave doesn’t just turn on the boiler but distributes the heat round the building which is more energy efficient. Now, I can set up the frost protection programme when I want to, and I can use the heating diaries if the school has lettings at the weekend.”

Brian said the system has been reliable and that he has never had to call the HeatingSave Operations Department in order to repair the system; and on the occasions he has needed to call the HeatingSave help desk regarding the PC he was impressed by the service.

He told the reporter, “The HeatingSave help desk is as good as gold. They are on the case straight away, and that is very good. They use the Internet to see inside our HeatingSave system and they can check that everything is running correctly.”

School Bursar Sally Martin also approves of HeatingSave. “We’re saving significantly on oil as we have not had to buy as much as we did in the last year. We’re already seeing the benefit,” she said.

When we asked Brian Hine if he would recommend HeatingSave to other schools, he answered with the all-too-familiar response of “Yes”, and summing up said, “I just think it’s a worthwhile system to have. It saves you money. It’s times like summer and autumn, that is where it is really paying off.”