GF Piping Systems recently staged a seminar in London to raise awareness of the opportunities presented by the multiple UK sites where tall structures are planned.
More than 100 skyscraper commercial and residential buildings are currently under design or development in London, maximising land usage, while presenting project teams with genuine technical challenges. However, the event at the Building Centre offered specialist contractors, stockists and sector journalists an insight into how GF’s comprehensive product portfolio can provide cost effective solutions.
GF Piping Systems’ Sales Director South East & South West, Mark Loader set the scene by presenting an overview of the manufacturer’s capabilities which encompass high pressure plastic pipe systems serving all sectors, from water treatment and marine installations through cooling and microelectronics to the chemical process industry.
In particular, he profiled the potential of INSTAFLEX, with pipe and fittings extending from 16mm diameter up to 225mm with an operating temperature range from -100 to +950 centigrade. Carrying the BS Kitemark and fully WRAS approved, INSTAFLEX can cope with pressures up to PM 25 and offers fail-safe joint welding techniques for straightforward and trouble free assembly under site conditions.
Product Manager Sean Green spoke about the growing importance of Heat Interface Units – or HIUs – in diverse situations, including the delivery of heating and domestic hot water within apartment buildings or commercial properties. Not only is the Government backing the greater use of heat networks to help reduce energy use across the built environment, but they can also offer advantages for both end users and property owners.
Correctly sized and specified, they can deliver more affordable warmth from centralised boiler plants, or low carbon sources such as heat pumps, CHP plants or even waste heat, says the company. Typically such communal systems also offer reduced maintenance requirements, with no gas safety checks required within individual dwellings, while heat metering facilitates accurate billing.
Despite their potential, the history of heat networks and HIUs has been blighted by past problems – often resulting from poorly insulated or leaking distribution mains and lack of control for end users – so choosing the right supplier is critical.
To deliver the best performance the HIU must help optimise system temperatures in line with the CIBSE guidance document on heat networks, published in 2015 and be sized to match both the specifier and the system’s requirements. Factors to be considered include primary supply and return temperatures, supply pressure, the size of the network (number of units) and the design output. GF’s range of advanced HIUs are said to be capable of accommodating all of these criteria within a successful heat network.
Overall, whatever the scale of a project in terms of storey height or square footage, GF Piping Systems believes it can offer clients’ project teams the required solution for heating, cooling, process or potable supply – encompassing technical support from the design and pre-contract stage through installation, commissioning and future maintenance.
