Tina Roberts and her five-year-old daughter Molly, who has profound learning disabilities, have been living in a house in Lightwater, Surrey that was simply inadequate to accommodate their needs. When it came to washing, heating, access and more, the house did not have the right facilities, but Miss Roberts was determined to adapt their home to give young Molly the best chance at independence.
As part of a complete refurbishment, Vokèra worked with the Ecotechnicians Co-operative, which promotes quality heating projects and organises free installations for good causes, to install a new boiler and control solution.
The property required a substantial amount of conversion in order to help Molly live her life with ease. Surrey Heath Borough Council provided a disabilities funding grant to help the family and when Ecotechnicians heard her story, it got in touch with manufacturers, installers and tradesmen asking them to lend their support, which is how Vokèra became involved.
Vokèra’s Managing Director, Phil Adams, immediately offered a 32KW Unica i boiler and a BeSMART controller to provide Molly with an A+ ErP heating package, including a 10 year warranty to cover fixes or breakdowns if they happened. Ecotechnicians installer members also volunteered their labour and equipment, sourcing donations from different manufacturers who were willing to help update the heating and hot water supplies.
On the day, six volunteers arrived at Molly’s home to begin the task of removing the existing installations to make room for newer, more efficient equipment. The boiler was first removed before the volunteers checked and re-routed the gas supply to make sure the new fixings worked effectively. A vertical flue was then installed to ensure the new Vokèra boiler functioned properly and allowed condensation to flow out from the roof.
“We were very pleased to get involved in this charity installation,” commented David Iszchak, Technical Trainer at Vokèra, who was involved in the process. “As well as the boiler, we have installed the BeSMART Wi-Fi enabled smart thermostat, which means the family can now control the boiler remotely from each zone of the house, heating up the necessary rooms when needed. Having put the boiler in the loft, we also managed to free up extra floor space for the bathroom conversion, giving Molly more room to move around.”
Ecotechnician installers from all over the country kindly donated tubes and fittings to use in the installation, with additional components donated by Honeywell, Spirax-Sarco and Grunfos. Impressively, the team managed to finish the heating installation in one day. That gave the operation team an early start to move in and continue with the building work and components that will soon enable Molly to move back into a beautifully adapted home.
