Brewers Hill Middle School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, educates approximately 200 pupils. The school says it is a safe and caring learning environment where everyone has the opportunity to reach their potential. In describing its core values, it says, it believes in the principles of inclusion, the importance of consistency and the development of the whole child. They value mutual respect by having high expectations of learning and teaching and say they will continue to raise standards. One of their mottos is ‘Our school’s achievements will be recognised, celebrated and shared with the wider community’.
The school’s heating is provided by conventional oil-fired boilers – three main boilers, plus a small one for hot water. Like most schools, the buildings are very expensive to heat. In 2009 the schools Estates Manager, Brian Fensome was looking at ways of reducing costs by making efficiency savings. One of the areas that he considered was the school heating. He pointed out to the HeatingSave reporter, “The problem was that we have a vast school hall and other zones which were difficult to heat efficiently. The heating tended to be either on all the time or off, and some of the time it was one when it didn’t need to be”
Heating efficiency did not matter so much when the price of crude oil was $10 a barrel, but now it is $88 a barrel and the OECD have said it could quadruple in price by 2025. Brian added, “The school was looking to save money, and last winter was very, very cold for a very long time. I’ve never known a winter as severe”
After searching for a cheaper way to manage the heating system last winter, Brewers Hill management noted HeatingSave’s proven track record in reducing the heating costs for other schools. HeatingSave’s Building Energy Management System had delivered savings of around 30% for other schools, so Brewers Hill arranged to have one installed in early 2010.
The HeatingSave system at Brewers Hill saves the school money because they can now program the heating system to match the use of the school by varying the heating times throughout the week, not wasting fuel at weekends, term breaks and after pupils have gone home in the afternoon. HeatingSave lets them change a room temperature many times in the day and is ideal for heating the school automatically for impromptu evening events giving the school management 100% control of the heating throughout the year. The occupancy sensors also make significant savings as the heating is automatically turned down when staff, pupils or other users of the school vacate the buildings.
Brian explained how the convector fans in the classrooms are linked into the HeatingSave system which also has temperature sensors, accurately recording the classroom temperatures in various parts of the school. He added “HeatingSave has kindly changed the basic system to suit our requirements and this should show some additional benefits to our heating bills”
Brewers Hill Middle School has had need to call the HeatingSave help desk once and their comment on the quality of the service was, “The service was fine”
The HeatingSave system at Brewers Hill Middle School incorporates a PC running the Building Energy Management System software. This show the school how much their heating and energy use is costing on a day-by-day basis. It also shows the total kilowatt hours used by the school and the amount of greenhouse gasses produced. An excellent way to teach children of the importance of managing the environment as well as a practical laboratory for the science lessons, some might think. The PC is connected to the Internet so that HeatingSave can monitor the performance of the heating system and the savings made. Another advantage of HeatingSave for those establishments with oil-fired systems, like Brewers Hill, is that it can predict how much oil is left in the tank.
Brewers Hill school bursar, Maureen Phillips, said of HeatingSave, “Now with a few adjustments the heating is much more balanced” and Brian concluded that now the whole of the school’s heating is controlled by HeatingSave, for the first time over an entire winter, Brewers Hill is looking forward to huge savings on oil bills.
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Brewers Hill Middle School
Aldbanks
Dunstable
Bedfordshire
LU6 1AJ
Email: brewershil@deal.bedfordshire.gov.uk
Tel: 01582 666668
Fax: 01582 672708
+44(0)1480 223923
