Frese UK believes new housing developments should be connected to community hot water systems if the UK hopes to meet stringent European carbon emission targets.
The company, which manufactures flow control systems and pressure independent control valves, believes the district and community systems, which cut domestic carbon emissions in Denmark by a quarter between 1980 and 2010, would have a similar effect here in the UK.
With housebuilding now on the increase following the recession, managing director Stephen Hart said that it was the perfect time to rethink heating and hot water provision to residential developments after the EU introduced the Energy Efficient Directive, legally binding it to reduce its carbon emissions by 17% by 2020.
“Community heating systems are proven to make a huge difference to energy consumption,” he said. “Basically an apartment building, a street or even a district is served by one main boiler which improves system efficiency and facilitates the use of zero or low carbon heat sources such as biomass boilers, CHP engines and heat pumps.
“This sends hot water through a primary flow system to every connected dwelling. Using a Heat Interface Unit (HIU), domestic water in a secondary system is heated by the hot pipes of the primary system. This allows individual households to retain control of heating and hot water temperature and even be metered separately to monitor use while reducing energy waste.”
In addition to supplying its pressure independent flow and temperature control valves to others, Frese has is nor producing its own HIU, the Frese CONHEAT unit. Each unit is built to fit each new flow system but all feature its industry-leading ALPHA constant flow regulators, and PV Compact differential pressure control valves. This creates a super-efficient system ideal for multiple-dwelling developments.
“We firmly believe that this is the future for developers,” said Stephen. “Once there was industry scepticism about the system efficiency benefits of the dynamic balancing valves we produced, now they are the industry standard.
“Frese is always looking at how we can move forward and meet the challenges of consumer demands and energy efficiency and we are confident that this will change the game for developers and help them make a major contribution to the reduction of the nation’s carbon emissions.”