Case Studies

Salford Civic Centre Heat Pumps and system upgrade

Salford Civic Centre Heat Pumps and system upgrade

Client: RPS Group
Project Value: £1.2m
Project Manager: Paul Cooper / Mark Farrell

Overview

The Kimpton team were appointed to update the plant room and heating system at Salford Civic Centre. We installed a new heat pump and DX Condenser system for the hot water and heating across the entire building and replaced radiators and pipework throughout. All whilst working around a building that is known to have asbestos across multiple locations within the building fabric.

Salford Civic Centre, formerly Swinton and Pendlebury Town Hall is located on Chorley Road in Swinton, Greater Manchester. The building was designed in 1936 by architects Percy Thomas and Ernest Prestwich, after winning a national design competition. Two years later, the building was completed, having been built by J. Gerrard and Sons at a cost of £80,000. It was officially opened on 17 September 1938.

The existing heating systems were at the end of their efficient life and the opportunity was taken, with new plant needed, to make huge strides forward in decarbonisation.

Challenges

The challenge of Asbestos within the building presented challenges throughout the build and was a key influence in many of the decisions taken throughout the build.

The first of these was the strip out. This would normally be a job we would complete ourselves but a specialist team was required to remove all of the redundant plant and pipework.

Secondly, when we were installing the new pipework, much had to be left in place to minimise any risk through disturbance. What this meant in practice for the team installing pipework and radiators internally, was that everything had to be surface mounted, working alongside the existing pipework runs.

Here’s the system and set-up before we started.

 

Our Work

The project was divided into two distinct sections. The first of these provides the heating and hot water for the council chamber and is located within a rooftop air handling plant room. The existing wall-mounted MHS Quinta gas-fired boiler rated at 45kw provided the heating to serve a fresh air supply duct-mounted heating coil.

This was replaced with two Mitsubishi PUZ DX heating and cooling condensers, which supply both warm or cool air to the chamber. The existing Trend IQ4 BMS system is relatively modern and was retained to control the existing supply air fan and integrate the new DX Units in terms of time and temperature.

The far bigger element of the job was in the basement plant room, where the three Viessmann VitoCrossal 300 gas-fired boilers, each rated at 176kw, provided the heating. An Andrews Water heater with 100 litres capacity and 40kw rating was also in place. You can see from the pictures below that much of the internal and external pipework is 5″ and was all fully insulated prior to completion.

These old boilers were replaced with ten Mitsubishi CAHV P500 for the heating, via a plate heat exchanger and another to supply the hot water, via a 100-litre water cylinder. All of the pumps throughout were replaced with newer, quieter and more efficient units.

Outside of the plant room, we installed a number of new 900mm High Heritage Cast Iron Column Type Radiators to match closely with the style of the ones already installed. The primary circulation to radiators on the main floors is via all new stainless steel, surface mounted, single pipe pipework with some two-pipe distribution in the core areas. When your work is this on view and in stainless steel throughout, it has to be done to an immaculate standard.

 

Here’s an overview of some of our work.

 

Project Management

The project was managed by both Paul Cooper on the plant side and Mark Farrell on the installation.

Mark Farrell, speaking about the project was delighted with the finished job.

“It was a great job to work on. There were a few challenges and the Asbestos gave us a few headaches in finding sensible, risk-free workarounds, but overall the finished jobs looks great and works well. The stainless pipework played right to our strengths. We pride ourselves on working to very high standards anyway, but normally our work is hidden away in voids and behind access panels. It’s nice to actually see some of it proudly on display, even if all the big work is still buried within the building fabric.”

 

 

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