Rinnai contributes to university's sporting excellence
Loughborough University has the country's largest concentration of high quality sports training facilities, equipment and support resource. These exceptional facilities use Rinnai technically advanced continuous flow water heaters to provide a never-ending flow of hot water to service the changing rooms and showering facilities.
However, just the same as with athletes, it is important to keep the facilities in prime condition. Back in 2010 it was obvious that the old water heating system at the Stadium Pavilion had lost its competitive edge so a new performer was selected - a super energy efficient Rinnai continuous flow condensing gas water heater system. The Stadium Pavilion opened in 1937 and was designed and built by students for students. Now, 75 years later, the Pavilion is still a very important landmark building on Campus, providing changing and showering facilities for countless athletes.
According to Jeremy Plant, maintenance engineer at the University, the old storage system was completely impractical, inefficient and needlessly expensive to run. "For example," he explains, "the showers tend to be used sporadically. At a big event at the weekend there could be 50 people battling to use them at once, during the week there might be one or two. That meant we had to store a lot of hot water 'just in case' in two large cylinders. Needless to say, that was often wasted, a bad idea."
Clearly the University needed to change the system to one that could cater for these fluctuations without running up huge energy bills and the solution wasn't hard to find. "We have used Rinnai Infinity water heaters on site before -over the past six years we have installed 10 or more in various sites on Campus. Our experience with Rinnai products and Rinnai personnel such as our local Rinnai representative has been consistently positive.
"The beauty of working with Rinnai is the service they offer. We presented the project to Rinnai's Technical Sales team who came up with the design, configured the sizes of unit required and delivered the system complete and to a tight timescale. We are very happy with Rinnai all round.
Now three HDC1500e external heaters with secondary circulation provide hot water for 11 showers, four wash hand basins and two plunge baths. "The Rinnai system has resulted in an energy reduction gas saving due to higher efficiencies, and because we are no longer maintaining large amounts of stored hot water. It's not rocket science to work that out," says Plant who believes as the demand for more energy efficient water heating methods becomes greater other similar organization's should look to continuous flow condensing water heaters as a way of cutting both fuel and water bills.
Rinnai's heavy duty condensing range uses two heat exchangers to capture residual heat from flue gases to pre-heat incoming fresh water, with the HDC 1500e turning in 105% net efficiencies*. These figures add up to considerable on-going energy savings when compared with traditional stored water systems.
Rinnai is the only manufacturer that can currently supply a complete range of proven energy efficient condensing units that more than meet legislation at a time when the proposals have been announced that non-condensing gas water heaters will be outlawed from October this year in new build projects. Industry experts predict the changes will soon extend to the refurbishment and replacement market as the Government battles cut harmful emissions and save energy.
With a Rinnai condensing unit, temperature is regulated to within +/- 1°C via a 'smart' digital controller without any variation of temperature at the outlet even when water is drawn off elsewhere. All models have full electronic ignition, no pilot light and operate on demand only, so there is no gas consumption when the unit is idle.
The units are easily configured in a manifold arrangement, ensuring there will never be a shortfall of instant hot water whatever the demand. As long as electricity, water, and gas supplies are connected, hot water is available when the hot water taps are open.
* Tested and certificated by Technigas to EN 26
"The old system just wasn't good enough. Since fitting the new Rinnai system we haven't had one cold shower, even in times of excessive demand"
Jeremy Plant, Maintenance Engineer
