Context

Brooke Farm, an 18th century property near Oakham in Rutland, has recently renovated its heating system with the help of a number of Wilo products – seven in all - incorporated in the design.

The main building is connected to an adjoining cottage, with different areas of the property having very different requirements of a heating system. The brief was to provide the property with underfloor heating in some parts of the property and radiators in others, with towel rails in all the bathrooms – so hot water needed to be available in five bathrooms, six wc’s, a kitchen and a utility room. The customer also wanted some areas of the property to be warmer than others as some parts of the building would only be used when the grown-up family was at home.

All the components for running the system were to be contained in a neat plant room in one corner of the property. These included a large twin-coiled domestic hot water cylinder with a secondary return to every water outlet in the property.

Products supplied

A new Veissmann Oil Boiler with a blue flame burner, weather-compensated was installed, with remote access provision to the installers and controlled via an App for the customer. Each heating zone is mixed to different weather-compensated heating curves.

As the boiler house is at the furthest point from the kitchen and utility room, Heatspec specified a Wilo pressurisation unit to maintain system pressure at around 1.5 bar making venting the radiator circuits much easier for the customer. There is protection on the system in the form of a Spirotech magnetic dirt separator and a deaerator to aid in ensuring that corrosion cannot affect any part of the sizeable system.

The Wilo products all contribute to the reliability and easy maintainability of what is a complex heating and hot water system with a significant demand for hot water at times. It’s worth remembering that the property is not on the water mains, relying for its water supply on its own borehole. A Wilo Boost pump on the system which, when called upon to work, will easily deliver enough hot water to the multiple bathrooms, even if required all at the same time. There’s also a Wilo domestic hot water return pump. One of Wilo’s popular Wilo Yonos-PICOs helps load the cylinder, three Yonos PICOs run mixed heating circuits, and a Wilo pressurisation unit makes sure the hot water heads off to the far reaches of the property when required.

Comments

“It’s been a testing project with the high requirement for hot water at peak times when the family is home and all the bedrooms and bathrooms are occupied,” says Heatspec's Glen Wakeling. “It’s a huge property when you look at the distances we need to get hot water to provide heating and hot water in bathrooms and the kitchen, but we’ve been blessed with a decent plant room to house all the components we needed to allow us to deliver the system we were briefed to provide.”

“We’ve been delighted to be able to provide the pumping requirements for this system,” says Wilo’s Justin Smith. “We worked closely with Glen to find the pumps he needed to be able to meet the demands of this system and now it’s up and running and the customer is happy with it, we can relax a bit knowing that we’ve managed to deliver the system this property needed.”