Boiler Room replacement – Liverpool Hope University

The Kimpton Maintenance Team have just completed a boiler room replacement project in Liverpool and it’s a little different to most of the many thousands we have completed before. Here’s the story.

The Frances Mary Lescher Building (FML) within the Hope Park campus is the centre of the academic, administrative and conference activity of the University. There are the campus shops, several places to eat, the Students’ Union office and bar. It’s a prime location and very much at the heart of university life.

It is also home to 532 first year undergraduates student rooms. Amongst these are Angela and Austin Halls which are two of the more established halls of residence.

So when there is a problem in the boiler room, it’s critical that the problem is resolved quickly and permanently.

FML Building has a main boiler plant which serves the whole of FML and heating to other surrounding satellite buildings The system feeds a local common header system within the satellite buildings, that in turn heats the radiators and supplies the hot water via a large domestic calorifier. During the daytime period, there was no visible issue, but overnight, when the system was cool and the demand low, water was pouring back into the boiler room. There were no visible leaks within the boiler room, yet every night fresh water appeared?

After an overnight stay by one of the Hope Estates team, the issue was traced back to a leaking satellite supply heating pipe, hidden within a pipe duct under the beautiful parquet floor of the cafe. It was almost impossible to get access to and would have caused massive disruption to the site, leaving them with no catering facilities. To compound the issue, the age of the building meant that no usable drawings existed to allow the team to trace the route and find the source of the leak easily. The leaking pipework initially was thought to only feed Angela Hall

The first solution was to fabricate some new 80mm satellite pipework that ran across the roof of the FML building to feed Angela Hall. You can see them here in their red oxide finish and then later when they were fully insulated.  This solved the leak, but after further extensive surveys/testing left Austin Hall without heating. Logic says that a new run of pipework across the rest of the building would have allowed it to continue to be fed by the main FML system. Cost, however, said otherwise. Fabricating and installing parallel pipes over 40m long does not come cheap, so we looked for an alternative.

Sensibly, when we were working on the site some 6-7 years ago, we extended the gas supply to reach the far side of Austin that enabled us to deliver a far simpler solution.

With any boiler room replacement project there are multiple considerations. After cost and potential cost of disruption was taken into account it was agreed that the way forward, was to create a new and highly efficient boiler room within Austin Halls exiting calorifier room. As an interim solution, a mobile plant room was delivered and connected into the existing pipework to allow us to install the new boilers, prior to connection.

You can see this all taking place in the following pictures.

Original Pipes are cut and two stabbings added

The mobile plant room is delivered to site and connected into the system to provide temporary heat and hot water.

Flexible pipes come from the mobile plant into the existing pipework

Marking up in the boiler room for the location of the new boilers

And then after fitting into place the two x 90Kw boilers, designed to fulfil the requirement of 140Kw for heating and 30Kw for hot water.

You can see the finished pipework insulated and ready to go.

The previous system was originally tank fed, but as this one was now independent of the FML heating system it needed to be pressurised. So, one of the final additions prior to completion was the installation of a pressurisation unit, expansion vessel and an air/dirt separator. These should ensure trouble-free running for many years.

So that’s the project.

You can see there were some challenges and some well thought through solutions by the Kimpton maintenance team on site and supported by the design team.

For campus life, there was almost no disruption as the Austin & Angela Halls were only without heat for one single eight hour period whilst the heating system was isolated for the switch and final pipework connections to be installed.

As a team, we are often asked for thinking over and above simple installations. We understand the business pressures you face and the need for continuity of supply with heating and hot water in any residential, commercial and communal spaces.

If you have a heating, ventilation or energy problem, or if you are looking for a complete boiler room replacement, then please call us today on 0151 343 1963. With over 50 years of experience, we’ll have a solution.