Wilo has provided a
solution to a major problem for a London-based social housing provider, that
was experiencing issues because of poor heating system circulating water
quality.
Poplar Housing and
Regeneration Community Association (HARCA) owns and manages around 10,000 homes
in East London.
Like many social
housing providers, the organisation realises the importance of clean water in
heating systems to ensure that the systems operate efficiently and without
problems for their tenants and leaseholders.
It’s vital that
particularly with high rise developments, there is virtually no debris
circulating in the heating systems and any debris there is, is removed as
quickly as possible to avoid damage to the system components. In addition,
removal of air and micro-bubbles from the system will also ensure the system
operates smoothly.
It required a system
to operate in one of its buildings – Carradale House in Poplar. The property
has four Potterton NXR 3 280kW boilers. Wilo offered to run its new particle
separator system on a protracted trial to illustrate the benefits of the system
and to address the issues the property had.
The main issues were
mechanical seal failures on pumps due to poor system water quality as well as
poorly made up joints during the installation of the system.
Leaks were causing
the system to constantly introduce new clean water to the system, which was
diluting the inhibitor, reducing its effectiveness and helping to cause
unacceptable levels of debris forming in the system.
Wilo’s new
Wilo-SiClean Comfort is a particle separator system that is integrated into
heating systems to provide automated circulating water cleaning. The
circulating water is set into centrifugal motion so the particles of debris,
both magnetic and non-magnetic, can rotate downwards and collect in the
desludging tank. The cyclone created in the separator combined with the vortex
effect, leads to venting of the fluid and supports the degassing process.
Magnetic particles are removed by magnetophoresis.
The system was
installed in the basement plant room of the property and the discharge from the
system runs to drain. The Wilo Si-Clean Comfort is a ‘Plug and play’ system,
simple to install and maintain and is designed to provide particle separation
for larger heating systems.
Over the period of
the trial, the results showed huge improvement to the system circulating water
– a large reduction in conductivity – 12% - and a reduction of the iron in the
water samples taken – by a massive 75% - which is the main reason for mechanical
seal failure and damage to pump reliability. There was ample evidence of the
removal of the black magnetite sludge from the system, clearly seen where the
system was drained.
Dave Barnett from
Poplar HARCA says the evidence of the trial was impressive: “We ran system
health check reports on the system before we installed the Wilo equipment,
during the trial and at the end of the trial and the results were very good.
"The Si-Clean
Comfort was removing the debris from the system and improving the quality of
the circulating water significantly for the building, so I would have to say I
was impressed.”
Wilo’s Service Sales
Manager Adrian Ball says: “This was a great opportunity for us to illustrate
the benefits of this equipment in large buildings, especially where the
existing system was clearly experiencing a number of issues that needed
attention.
"We addressed
them and proved that our equipment was up to the task of sorting these issues
for Poplar HARCA and we’re hopeful we will be able to help them with other
buildings in their portfolio.”
