Maintaining a consistently comfortable temperature while keeping efficiency front of mind is key, whether it’s a rural primary school or a large academy. With tight budgets and a fluctuating demand for heating and hot water throughout the year, local authority premises such as schools, libraries, and social housing, can save a significant amount of energy and money by considering hiring heating equipment.

While some local authorities install oversized heating systems to cope with peaks in demand throughout the year, others may have an older and unreliable heating system which is unable to cope. However, there are efficient and affordable ways to tackle the problems.

Contingency – being prepared

First and foremost, if disaster strikes, hire solutions are ideal for providing emergency cover in the event of a breakdown while a more permanent solution is on its way. For schools, it is critical to ensure temperatures are kept above the industry recommended 18°to keep operating. If they find themselves without access to reliable heating, hot water, and cooling, action needs to be taken quickly to rectify the situation and avoid disruption to staff and pupils.

Hire options are perfect for these short-term situations and ensure that schools and universities are provided with a necessary resource that can be paid for in manageable instalments, rather than in a bulk upfront payment. Balancing the books: Hiring equipment means its associated costs can be kept off the balance sheet as the equipment doesn’t technically belong to the local authority. This can go a long way to finding a fast solution, especially when budgets are tight. Hiring equipment avoids capital expenditure which is an attractive option for businesses lacking the funds for large upfront costs of equipment. What’s more, hire packages tend to cover the cost of maintenance and repairs (in most circumstances),

ensuring money is saved and freed up to spend elsewhere.

It is often assumed that most hire projects are seasonal, with chillers demanded in the summer months and boilers required in winter. But it’s often just as important to have fully working boilers in place over the summer period.

Heating and cooling sustainably

While boilers are still the traditional solution considered for heating application, and heat pumps were traditionally known for their residential applications, with rising energy costs and increasingly ambitious environmental goals heat pumps have become more and more recognized across other building applications. They deliver the economic benefits from a most efficient use of energy while also providing a significant benefit towards emission reduction. One of our recent projects at a public college campus in central Britain is a great example to picture potential savings from applying heat pump technology as a renewable alternative to traditional gas fired boilers. This college, as part of the UK governments Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) was awarded funds to carry out heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures in three buildings. The existing gas-fired boilers were replaced with heat pump systems and new centralsed plant and distribution pipework to provide buildings with low carbon heating and hot water. Using the combination of air-to water heat pumps and water-to-water heat pumps we are able to provide up to 80°C of leaving water temperature to fully replace existing gas boilers. Looking at the Total Efficiency Ratio (TER) of the new system, the college has improved the efficiency by 400% versus the one that was installed previously.

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