Bricknell Primary School is the largest primary school in Hull with around 630 pupils on roll. Prior to the installation of the new Imax Xtra EL boilers, heating for the school was generated by five standard efficiency boilers that were over 13 years old. Not only were the old boilers having to be run at full capacity throughout term time to meet the school’s heat demand, leading to high energy use and running costs, they had also begun to fail and required continual maintenance. The decision was made to upgrade the appliances with a far more reliable, low cost solution.
Barry Dray, Contracts Manager/Estimator at M Bielby Ltd, oversaw the project and worked closely with Steve Hass, Facilities Manager at Bricknell Primary School, to schedule the refurbishment work during the summer holidays to simplify installation and avoid disruption to pupils and staff. The Imax Xtra EL boilers were delivered directly from the Ideal Commercial Boilers manufacturing facility, located under a mile from the school. Barry commented, “The Imax Xtra EL boilers were delivered on a pallet and, due to their compact size and shape, were easy to manoeuvre up the ramp in the boiler house and onto the existing base. As they take up significantly less room than the old boilers, there is now plenty of space around each unit, making boiler access and maintenance much easier.”
The most challenging installation aspect faced by Barry and the team was the replacement of the old flue, as the flue exit point for the school’s plant room is via an existing chimney stack. To overcome this issue, a scaffolding rig was erected which enabled engineers to remove the old flue and replace it with a new condensing type flue system. Barry added, “Whenever we wanted to check a technical aspect relating to the boilers or the flue, Ideal Commercial Boilers were on site straight away. I couldn’t fault the technical back-up or service they provided.” Steve Hass affirmed, “We are delighted with the new boilers. As well as being very reliable they are also easy to programme, featuring a ‘holiday mode’ on the panel that we can use outside of term time which can be overridden simply by pushing a button if the school is occupied at any point during the holidays. Running costs have also been greatly reduced and by the end of the year we hope to have saved 1/3 on our heating bill compared to the previous boilers. This is a fantastic result.”
