St Pauls Catholic Primary School, Hampton Court, Thames Ditton — plant room refurbishment covering both space heating and domestic hot water generation, with new gas-fired condensing boilers, a new gas-fired water heater, a new flue system and new controls, delivered in three weeks.
Two systems, one plant room
Most school plant rooms carry two separate duties. One is space heating — the boilers and the distribution that warm the classrooms. The other is domestic hot water — the supply to kitchens, washrooms and cleaners’ sinks, which a school needs every day it is open regardless of the season.
At St Pauls both were replaced in the same works. New gas-fired condensing boilers were installed for heating, and a new gas-fired water heater was installed for hot water generation.
Those two assets rarely fail at the same time, and it is common to see them replaced years apart, with two separate strip-outs, two shutdowns and two sets of alterations to the same gas service. Replacing them together meant one shutdown, one set of gas service modifications, one flue installation and one commissioning exercise.
Scope of works
- Strip-out and disposal of the existing plant room equipment
- Modifications to the existing gas service
- Installation of new gas-fired condensing boilers
- Installation of a new flue system
- Installation of a new gas-fired water heater
- Installation of new plant room equipment
- Design and installation of new controls
- Pre-commission cleansing
- Testing and commissioning
- Builders work in connection with the mechanical installation
- Provision of record documentation
Programme
The works were completed in three weeks. Both the heating plant and the water heater were removed, replaced, cleansed and commissioned within that period, and the plant room was handed back with record documentation.
Where a school is planning capital works, dealing with heating and hot water generation in one programme is usually the lower-disruption route even though the individual scope is larger, because the building only loses its services once.
A second project at the same school
ComGas has also carried out a separate M&E and alarm services package at St Pauls, supporting the structural reinforcement of failing RAAC planks in the school’s corridors. That project is documented separately: St Pauls Catholic Primary School — RAAC remediation M&E enabling works.
Heating and commercial hot water systems are frequently replaced together in the plant room projects ComGas delivers for schools.
