Ground to air heating system for Queen Elizabeth’s School

As one of the UK’s pioneers in the promotion of sustainable and environmentally friendly construction, Burdens is pleased to be supplying the materials for the ground-to-air heating system that is being installed at the historic Queen Elizabeth’s School in Wimborne, Dorset, which dates back to  Tudor times.

Rebuilt in the 1950s, the school – like many around the country – was showing its age in terms of the difficulty of maintaining optimum classroom temperatures during the coldest winters and hottest summers. Client Dorset County Council was therefore delighted when the school was selected under the Government’s  Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme for £50m funding. And as a bonus, the project was granted an extra £2.125m when the Department for Education and Skills selected it as one of only three pathfinder projects to become a National Sustainability Demonstration Project. Such an honour carries responsibilities of course, in this case to make sure the required environmental performance in terms of energy efficiency and educational enhancement is reached.

Benefits of ground to air heating systems

In line with the old saying that there is nothing new under the sun, the heart of the environmental system now installed at the school echoes an approach adopted by the Romans, who observed that if you go down just 2.5m or so beneath the surface of the earth, the temperature is remarkably consistent through the seasons. Given this, it is reasonably straightforward to install a ground-to-air heating/cooling system that will warm cool air in the winter and chill warm air from the classrooms during the summer. As a result, heating and air conditioning systems in the school will have less work to do – and so save costly energy – and the working environment will be easily maintained at the optimum for students’ performance.

The world’s largest ground-to-air heating system

The system being supplied by Burdens has been designed and manufactured by Rehau and installed by Carillion. In this case, 3500m of its Awadukt Thermo twin-walled polypropylene pipe work is being buried beneath three of the school’s new teaching blocks as part of what will be the world’s largest ground-to-air heating system installation. Once installed, the ducts will boost classroom air temperature in the winter by up to 9 deg C and reduce it by up to 14 deg C in the summer. One of the pluses of the Rehau product is that the pipes are lined with silver to help disinfect the air as it passes through.

It is not just the ground-to-air heating system that is helping the Queen Elizabeth's School project deliver against its Sustainability Demonstration Project brief. There is a raft of further methods that the project team is using to help make sure it becomes an exemplar of sustainable construction.
 
"There are several elements of this build where we have been going through a steep learning curve," says Carillion project manager David Pritchard. "We will be using straw bales to build the learning centre, as well as sheep's wool insulation and lime renders. It is certainly the first time I've used some of these systems."

Related Products

• Awadukt Thermo

Leading supplier of sustainable building materials

“The role of the merchant is becoming more important than ever,” argues Ralph Morey, development manager at Burdens Environmental, the specialist arm of Burdens. “This is particularly so on this kind of project, where environmental performance is vital. We are able to highlight exactly what materials or systems are available, often those that are not particularly easy to source. We are finding that more people are contacting us now because we can offer a range of products and can point clients in the right direction at systems that will work best for their individual requirements. We are not restricted to any one manufacturer and so can highlight the best options.”

This is not the first Rehau system to have been supplied by Burdens Environmental. It also provided the first commercial installation in Northern Ireland of Awadukt Thermo in a development of serviced business units at Ards Business Centre in Newtownards, near Belfast.