Halewood Health and Fitness Club

Remeha high-efficiency condensing boilers have been installed at Halewood Health & Fitness Club in Knowsley, Liverpool, to provide an effective solution to robust, energy-efficient, reliable heating and hot water provision.

Leisure centres are intensive energy users, especially complexes with swimming pools. In fact, facilities like these typically use five times as much energy per square metre as offices, according to CIBSE. So it’s essential that the heating system operates as efficiently as possible to achieve the comfort levels expected by visitors and staff, while simultaneously reducing energy waste and keeping costs to a minimum.

Like many leisure complexes, Halewood Health & Fitness Club is open seven days a week. The facility, which is managed by Volair on behalf of Knowsley Council, had been served well by its original Remeha boilers for nearly twenty years. The three Remeha Gas 3002 boilers had reliably heated the water in the 25-metre swimming pool, fed the underfloor heating, steam and sauna rooms, and supplied hot water for the showers in the changing room facilities.

But as one of the boilers beginning to fail and parts were becoming increasingly hard to source, the decision was taken to undertake a boiler upgrade. M&E contractors Foztek Ltd, who won the tender, recommended retrofitting three high-efficiency Remeha Gas 310 Eco Pro boilers to improve heating performance and provide easier future maintenance.

“The key requirements were to ensure reliability, reduce operational costs and improve the energy efficiency of the site in keeping with the Council’s wider environmental commitments,” said Foztek’s MD Paul Foster. “We recommended upgrading to the latest generation of Remeha boilers as we are familiar with their products and the high levels of efficiency and reliability they deliver.”

To ensure that the leisure centre remained open to the public as normal during the project, a minimum of two boilers were required to run at all times.

“It was a case of one boiler out, one boiler in to keep the Centre fully operational,” Paul explained.

The Gas 310/610 Eco Pro range has been specially designed for ease of installation. Its compact dimensions and ability to be installed side-to-side in a modular arrangement provide extended, flexible, space-saving design options. And where access is restricted, this boiler model can be dismantled into parts, then reassembled once inside the plant room. It is also supplied on integral wheels for easier positioning.

“The installation went well,” said Paul. “From an engineering perspective, it was interesting to see how boiler technology has evolved over the years, as the new boilers are half the size of the older models!”

With the three new Remeha boilers now fully operational, there has been a perceptible improvement in heating performance, according to staff at the Club.

“The old boilers performed really well over the years, especially considering their age and the high demand,” added Paul. “But even the most efficient and robust boilers eventually come to the end of their lifecycle. Staff have commented on the noticeable benefits, from consistently hot water for the showers to higher comfort levels across the Centre.”

Volair and Knowsley Council are looking forward to continuing high boiler performance and the prospect of reduced energy costs in the months ahead, which, given the higher operational efficiency of the new boilers, should be considerable.