It is in the boiler room for Tickhill Road Hospital.
It makes my combi look small.
Adam
Looks like a typical non-domestic boiler, fairly modern probably less than
5-10 years old. Hard to say what the rating would be but quite probably 100s kW rather than MWs.
Especially in USA hotels, I'm always amazed at the amount of hot water on tap. Bath in morning, nearly everyone must be having baths and showers, the hot water literally gushes out of the large-spouted faucet (!). Anyone know how those systems work ? A vast hot water tank, or megawatt instant water heater ? Simon.
We don't seem to have mastered that over here. Recent break in the north east, stayed in the Park Hotel, Tynemouth. Food was superb but the hotel was distincly Fawlty Towers & the plumbing was a joke, shower actually impossible to use, toilet cistern took 15 mins to refill.
It was built in 1938 apparently so I suppose the plumbing was still the original.
They tend to have a cold storage tank mabe on the ground floor or in basement, and a battery of large cylinders - all pumped. All sized for worst case scenario. Could be one cylinder/pump per floor, or vertical DHW riser. All with secondary circulation loops. If a customer does not get a hot powerful shower they reduce the charge. You will find flow regulators are on all the showers, so that a few do not rob the rest and then no payback to guests. Few take baths in hotels.
Often a case of lots of poorly planned 'improvements' - without going back to basic principles.
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Yet. They cheaply add bits on until the whole system is total cluttered mess.
Various options around, for example the Grand Hotel in Scarborough employs a very big Stokvis modulating low water content boiler with continuous pumping round the hotel hot water pipework loop as heated water storage. Tap draw offs are relatively short from the pumped loop. The ex "Forte" hotel in Brighouse uses Alfa Laval plate heat exchangers again pumped hot water loop providing the storage of heated water, The ex "Forte" hotel in the centre of Grimsby uses a couple of package boilers with a big storage calorifier between them. Again a pumped hot water circulation loop in use. The Esplanade in Scarborough uses a battery of "State" direct gas heated units with a pumped circulation loop system. The maintenance guy was most upset when these were put in to replace the old calorifier system as they came with "Sandblaster" conditioner units. The net effect of these units was to slowly but steadily strip out all the old lining of scale which had built up over the years since the early lead pipes were installed and they were leaking everywhere from porous sections. In the end the majority of the hotel was repiped on a breakdown basis bit by bit.
'Storage calorifiers' used to be the norm, a big version of domestic hot water cylinder with an access cover and a removable tube bundle. These are being replaced in some cases by plate heat exchangers, with the storage cylinnder capacity either reduced or eliminated. The plate heat exchangers are less tolerant of limescale ( narrow waterways) so they generally will need some water treatment system in hard water areas.
They almost invariably have a secondary circulation system, due to the necessity of eliminating stagnant loops which may allow legionella to gain a foothold.
The control panel is an industry standard type, they're made up by the controls contractors as required, usually have a BMS controller inside now. The boilers look like Viessmanns.
Broag (Remeha) 310/610 Eco Boilers. Somewhere between 130 kw and 1062Kw Makes my Netaheat look prehistoric
Large plate heat exchangers are becoming very common - and save much space. They need the boiler kW to operate properly - if a few coach load of guests arrive and all have a shower at the same time the boilers must cope. The secondary circulation loop is kept up to temp and when the demand cuts in the boilers fire up one by one, generally using boiler sequencing. When demand reduces the boilers drop out leaving one on tick-over maintaining the loop temp. This is similar to combi boilers with a plate heat exchanger pre-heat - it ticks over keeping the pate warm and the burner modulates up when DHW demand cuts in. Some combis have secondary circulation loops on them too and operate in a similar manner, although all is inside one case.
In many cases the gas supply is not there for large installations, so cylinder storage is used. If the fuel is there, plates tend to be used. Oil installations tend not to have the constraints of the local mains gas pipes.
Large plate heat exchangers in commercial systems are similar to large instant heating combi systems. Some have DHW buffer tanks to cope with an initial DHW load until the boilers heat up and can cope.
Which it is.
For smallish hotels batteries of sequenced multi-points are used. The advantage is that if one drops out the others are still used, as well as space saving. Rinnai specialise in this as do Andrews.
All commercial systems have secondary circulation loops. Although I have never come across one, some systems have a primary water loop kept hot, and local DHW plate heat exchangers giving instant heat.
Plate heat exchangers are attractive in that they are supposed to reduce Legionella problems.
An engineer I know acquired a plate heat exchanger like this but larger, with no controls or pump. It was around 1 year old - new owners, new ideas, an update and an extension meant it was discarded.
I have always wondered why plate heat exchanger companies do not make a large DHW version to replace unvented cylinders and run CH through them too - no G3, so can be DIYed. They also take up far less space. Then all you do is couple up a high kW boiler, which are not expensive these days. I can't see one of these being more expensive than an unvented cylinder with all its safety controls, yet it will not go boom and perform far better all around.
There were some ticker tape computer printed readings on them dated 2006. They could have been from a service. There a 6 boilers in total and the room is far too warm to work comfortably in
There are more controls here
Also can see what is most likely a secondary return pump to the left.
Yep. These controls were labeled hot water when the light lit up.
If I get back in there I will find out when they were fitted and their power ratings.
Adam
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