The Rinnai commercial gas fired water heaters has been engineered specifically to guarantee the highest efficiencies and the lowest running costs of any commercial water heater. And that is exactly what an Oxford leisure centre was looking for when it needed to update its old system.
The council-run Windrush Leisure Centre liked the sound of Rinnai and wanted to try it so they called on Rinnai for advice who in turn recommended Devizes-based WS Swift Services to perform the installation. According to Daniel Swift, Managing Director of WS Swift Services: “The long and the short of it was the Windrush Leisure Centre had a collection of three direct fired storage gas water heaters which were not performing well. They ran out of hot water at peak times and the council was also concerned about standing losses.”
The decision was made to install three Rinnai Infinity HDC1500 commercial water heaters on secondary return, which would eliminate any need for storage and reduce energy bills significantly.
Daniel Swift continues: “We installed the new system in another part of the building to the original plant room thereby freeing up space for more changing facilities. The compact, wall-mounted system was installed and prepared over 10 days and then we swapped the whole thing over in one day, taking out the old system and releasing the old plant room for development.”
Stewart Wilson, Leisure Development Officer (Facilities) at Oxford Council who project managed the installation says: “We had traditional water heaters that were put in in the mid 1980s and to be honest they had become part of the furniture so we didn’t realise how ineffective they were – always on, unreliable, leaking and uneconomical to run. When we decided to go for a change, and we looked at other solutions, I chose Rinnai Infinity units because I liked the product and was impressed by the endorsements from some big well-known companies. Rinnai’s area representative then put us in touch with Daniel Swift, one of their trained installers and we offered the contract to him. The changeover only took one day – albeit a long one for Daniel as the building is old and some pipes didn’t want to do what they were supposed to. All credit to them – they said they would do it in a day and they did.”
“Working on the premise that no news is good news, the Rinnai solution is perfect – we have not had a whisper of a problem since the day it went in. The showers are better – the units serve the men’s and women’s changing rooms amounting to 10 showers in all and five wash hand basins. Customers are getting instant hot water (under the old system it took some time to warm up) so they are happy.
“The Rinnai units automatically shut off at 11.30 at night and put themselves back on at 5 am (we open at 6). The benefit of this is that we are now saving seven hours of fuel out of every 24 hours unlike with the old system. Before that, the old 210 litre water heaters were constantly on, heating in excess of 660 litres of water.”
“The three Rinnai units work in sequence so we are making savings there too. On a Sunday night, say, when just one person might be taking a shower after swimming, only one of the heaters fires up. However, at a busy period just after school, all the showers can be going and all three of the Rinnai water heaters will be in use.”
Back to Daniel Swift, who has used Rinnai units for some time and says of them: “We do quite a lot of work with Rinnai as we do a lot of contract design work. The Rinnai water heater is a very clever product, which we have found invaluable for hotels, schools, leisure centres and other areas where a continual flow of temperature safe hot water is important.”
“Stored hot water systems are not designed to cope with modern hot water demand, as the recovery times are often longer than the period of use. Getting rid of a wasteful and costly hot water storage system can make a significant impact to running costs, when replaced with a technologically advanced Rinnai Infinity continuous flow gas fired water heater system.”
“The leisure centre is very happy with the Rinnai system and is already reporting savings in gas charges as well as better pressure and volume of water.”
Daniel Swift
