The Ultramax R600 range comprises seven models with outputs from 150kW to 571kW and utilises a proven water-cooled, down-firing, premix burner system with an all stainless steel heat exchanger assembly.  Ultramax R600 boilers have a NOx emission of less than 35mg/kWh (which easily exceeds the requirements for the best BREEAM score) and can return efficiencies of up to 109%.  And for complete peace of mind, an optional annual service agreement from MHS Boilers extends their guarantee to 10 years – which means you can rest assured that all parts and labour for breakdown or servicing will be covered. 

Ultramax R600 boilers are designed to pass through standard doors, with widths from 670mm and floor space is kept to a minimum with a footprint from as small as 0.74m2.  Each model is equipped with two return connections as standard, allowing high efficiency to be achieved when serving a mix of higher and lower system load circuit temperatures.  Another standard feature is the option to utilise room sealed or open flue systems.

The Ultramax R600 is suitable for use in single boiler or multiple/cascade installations. If used singly MHS Boilers can supply plug and play optional extra low loss headers, and if being used as retrofit appliances onto aged systems, a matched boiler protection plate heat exchanger unit is available for total boiler isolation. The modulating burner system allows turndown ranging from 5:1 to 7:1 to return optimum efficiency at low system loads.

All Ultramax R600 boilers enjoy built-in reliability with all solid state controls and moving parts confined to the gas valve and fan, so there is little to wear through usage, plus all components are sensibly laid out within the uncluttered frame making maintenance a simple task.  At just 59dbA, the Ultramax R600 range is extremely quiet - making them perfect for noise sensitive applications such as residential blocks, schools and libraries. The heat exchanger carries a 5 year guarantee.  An extended 10 year parts and labour guarantee is available with an annual MHS Boilers service agreement.

Ian Bradley, Managing Director, MHS Boilers said: “The R600 is one of the most efficient boilers of its type currently in the UK market.  With a good range of outputs, compact dimensions and ease of both installation and servicing, we are justifiably proud of the R600.”

Leading boiler supplier MHS Boilers will be showcasing its range of renewable heating systems and a selection of its extensive range of energy efficient commercial boilers at the UK’s premier green building exhibition Ecobuild 2008 (Stand E824, 26-28 February 2008, Earls Court, London).

On show will be the Elco Auron evacuated tube solar collector, with associated solar pumps, the Elco Solatron flat panel solar collector and the Elco Aerotop 10kW air source heat pump.  Elco is a long established brand across Europe and is part of the MTS Group.  Its products are available in the UK exclusively through MHS Boilers and have been specified for major projects globally, including the solar hot water heating for the athletes’ village at the Beijing Olympics.

Also on display will be the company’s innovative network heating system, Nexus, the new R600 commercial condensing boiler, and two Ultramax 65 high efficiency boilers in a cascade modular installation.

Ian Bradley, Managing Director, MHS Boilers commented: “We have a range of excellent renewable energy systems – both in terms of technology, as well as quality.   Nothing beats seeing products a close quarters, so Ecobuild 2008 gives our customers, specifiers and installers the chance to examine them first hand and to ask our highly trained technical staff any questions.”

Catherine Mill in Whitehaven, Cumbria is enjoying district heating thanks to 36 Nexus units from MHS Boilers.  The system supplies heating and hot water to 31 flats, offices and communal areas at the West Cumbria Area Office of the Two Castles Housing Association.

It is also the first installation of its kind in the UK to communicate the occupant’s energy use direct from the Nexus metering system via a modem to British Gas in Manchester for billing.

The Nexus provides both heating and instantaneous hot water (up to 19 litres per minute).  Provided with each unit, is a simple to use programmable room thermostat which allows comfort, economy and frost protection temperatures to be set to the users time scheduling requirements.  Each Nexus unit draws heat from the central boiler plant via a simple low temperature hot water loop and from that point on provides all the functions of a combi boiler. 

The Nexus features a state of the art Siemens Building Technologies heat meter, which is connected via an M-Bus system to the energy supplier's offices for remote energy consumption monitoring and billing purposes.

The Nexus units replaced old thermal stores at Catherine Mill, which were insufficiently insulated and caused problems with their thermostatic control.  By replacing them, the central boiler plant could be retained and the end-users could still benefit from instantaneous hot water at all times and controllable central heating when needed. 

The Nexus units are smaller than the original thermal stores and therefore much needed cupboard space has been freed up for the occupiers.

The system was designed and specified by Ken Wilkinson and Peter James of Wilkinson James Partnership Ltd in Workington, Cumbria.  Ken Wilkinson said: “The units were simple to install and we were able to keep the existing plant room and equipment, which meant there was minimum disruption to residents.”

The link up of the Siemens metering systems via the modem to the British Gas computer system was completed by Blaydon-on-Tyne-based Bell Control Solutions Ltd and managed by Project Manager Phil Bell.  The architect for the project was Day Cummins Ltd of Cockermouth.

Catherine Mill, which used to be known as Barrack Mill is a Grade II listed building.  It was built in 1890 to manufacture linen and was occupied by the Royal Cumberland Militia in 1857.  It was later used as a flour mill, carpet and clothing factory and warehouse.  Catherine Mill was restored and refurbished in 1992 for the Two Castles Housing Association with assistance from English Heritage, Copland Borough Council and the Housing Corporation.

Leading boiler supplier MHS Boilers has augmented its range of renewable energy products with a full range of large scale commercial biomass boilers.  Perfect for district heating, commercial and local authority applications, the boilers are available from 25kW – 1MW..

Working in partnership with wood heating specialist Econergy Ltd, MHS Boilers is able to provide a full advice, installation and after care package.  The wood chip or pellet boilers are fully modulating to 30% at up to 95% efficiency and are tolerant of wet low grade fuel. 

The biomass boilers are fully automatic from the feeder, ignition and boiler cleaner to the disposal of ash.  The boilers are managed with electronic and power saving control systems which ensure top fuel efficiency and maximum output.  The range is suitable for a wide range of fuels – pellet, wood chips or logs, some without major conversion, and is compatible with traditional heating systems as well as heat pumps and solar hot water.

MHS Boilers can offer full scoping of projects with outline proposals, payback and emission reduction figures, as well as full design including specification, schematic diagrams and controls.  Full service backup, extended guarantees and servicing contracts are also available.

Ian Bradley, Managing Director, MHS Boilers said: “The addition of commercial biomass boilers to our range of systems for renewable energy means we are able to deliver environmentally beneficial and energy efficient heating choices for virtually every situation.”

The visitor centre, which is run by English Heritage, has a building management system to ensure the most efficient use of energy. The boilers were specified for their high performance – 95% gross seasonal efficiencies – as well as for their ability to modulate their output according to the system load.  Additionally, each Ultramax WM100 boiler delivers a high output of 100kW, and thanks to their ease of installation and range of flue options, were able to fit in a confined boiler plant room.

Battle Abbey was founded in 1070 when William the Conqueror vowed to build a monastery at Battle as an act of penance for the violence of the Conquest. The high altar was placed on the spot where it was said that King Harold died.

The installation was specified by Dominic Shortland of GDA Associates, Brenchley, Kent and completed by BSW Heating of Haywards Heath, Sussex.

The Ultramax WM range of wall mounted gas fired condensing boilers set a new benchmark in power for appliances of their type.  There are five models available at 45kW, 65kW, 85kW, 100kW and 120kW.  Thanks to their high outputs and wall mounting, plant room space can be maximised and valuable floor space used for other purposes.   The three boilers with the smaller outputs are supplied with integral modulating speed primary pumps.

Engineered in a compact and uncluttered frame, the boiler utilises the well proven helical stainless steel tube type heat exchanger and coupled with its matched modulating premix burner can return efficiency in excess of 109.5% net with a turndown range of up to 7:1 dependant upon model.. All models can be room sealed if required and flued over considerable distances either 2 x DN80 tubes or 2 x DN100 tubes dependant upon model. Concentric flue components may also be used with sizes at 80/125 or 100/150 dependant upon model. Environmental impact is kept to a minimum through very high efficiency and very low emissions from the clean burning premix combustion system.

Ends.

Media information and photographs

Richard Belcham at Red Cell
Tel: 01376 561666      

Two Ultramax 225 floor standing high-efficiency, high-performance boilers from MHS have been installed at Ringwood Leisure Centre, Hampshire – the original location for the BBC’s toe-curling 1990s comedy The Brittas Empire.

The two boilers have been installed in conjunction with a CHP unit and provide heating and hot water for the leisure centre which includes two swimming pools, a gym and fitness studio, and a sports hall for badminton, trampolining and basketball.

The leisure centre, which is owned and managed by New Forest District Council, has a building management system to ensure the CHP unit is the primary source for heating and hot water, but uses the two Ultramax boilers to provide additional heat and hot water as necessary. 

The Ultramax boilers replaced two old cast iron appliances and were installed on a mezzanine floor within the plant room, with much of the pipe work being completed offsite.  This allowed the installation to take place without any downtime or closure of the leisure centre.

Barry Rickman, portfolio holder for leisure at New Forest District Council said: “The Council is delighted with the new boilers, recently installed at our Ringwood health and leisure centre. The new kit is effective, extremely efficient and, above all, economic to run.  The combination of these three elements is good news for the council taxpayer.”

David Finch of Capita Symonds specified the boilers.  He said: “We chose the Ultramax 225 boilers from MHS because they fitted perfectly with the boiler plant specification, work in a cascade format and are easily controlled by the building management system.”

Terry Wall from MHS Boilers provided on site technical support.  He said: “It’s always good to provide a solution which not only exceeds the end users expectations, but delivers great fuel savings.”

The installation was completed by Dewco Ltd, Ringwood, Hampshire.

Media information and photographs

Leading boiler supplier MHS Boilers has launched a new range of renewable energy appliances including heat pumps and solar panels with twin coil hot water cylinder.

The solar heating system has an excellent cost performance ratio as well as outstanding energy collection with minimum radiation losses. The solar collector has four lateral connections for hydraulic assembly and an aluminium housing framework. The system is easily expandable to increase number of panels, and conforms to Hail safety class system 3. Its lightweight construction ensures that the system is both easy to transport and install.

When it comes to refurbishing schools and colleges, municipal facilities or arts centres local authorities are faced with many choices.

With limited funds, tough decisions have to be made. The cost of replacing entire older heating systems can be prohibitive. Peter Gammon, Technical Product Manager for leading boiler supplier, MHS Boilers, believes there is a simple solution that is good for local authorities, good for installers and good for energy efficiency.

It’s an all too familiar scenario – the boiler plant is nearing the end of it’s life but the distribution system and heat emitters on the face of it will still appear to have some life span, but there are worries about dirt carryover from the (less than clean) existing system into new boiler plant and pumps etc.

So what do you do?

Well, there are a couple of choices – you can replace the whole system and boilers or you retrofit a new boiler onto an old system. Replacing the whole system is very often cost prohibitive and, if the rest of the building isn’t being refurbished, you can create all sorts of problems with closures due to structural work or removal and replacement of pipe work and heat emitters. The expense of replacing the whole system is not only due to the capital outlay of the new equipment and its installation, but the associated closure of the facilities – not always a problem if you have the school summer break to carry out the work, but not easy for a busy theatre or leisure centre.

Adding a new boiler onto an old system isn’t without risks as already mentioned. It’s not that the old system will breakdown and cause problems because you’ve added on a new high performance boiler – rather the opposite. You’re much more likely to cause damage to the new boiler because of the detritus and deposits from the old system.

There is a strong possibility that an older system will not have benefited from water treatment and therefore would have seen progressive corrosion. There is very often copious amounts of debris in an old system – most of which is likely to be ferric in nature. Without getting too technical, there is going to be a lot of magnetite (FE2O3) in low velocity parts of the system (the bottom of radiators for example), which will have accumulated very slowly over a number of years. As it has been accumulated slowly, it may not have caused any real problems. However, as soon as you drain down the system, you allow the silt and magnetite to dry out – which turns it into a fine dust that has the consistency of talcum powder. This isn’t too much of a problem in older boilers, which tend to have large, low velocity waterways, so the silt is spread thinly. However, with modern boilers you can have major problems.

The fine powder gets distributed when you refill or flush the system and is then free to flow into the new equipment such as pumps and valves, causing no end of headaches. The silt can also combine with the salts in the refill water and bake hard in the waterways of the new boiler plant. Also, being magnetic, the silt can clog around the armatures of canned rotor pumps and cause them to seize. So having invested in new high performance, high efficiency boiler plant, you might be causing all sorts of damage – blocked waterways, overheating of metal parts, nuisance operation of high limit thermostats and kettling noise to name but a few. Not only that, but coupling the old system to the new plant could cause damage to or failure of the boiler’s heat exchanger – the deposits act as an insulator, meaning the metal of the heat exchanger will retain the heat instead of passing it through to the water.

Is it really that bad? Does it really affect the efficiency of the boiler? Yes. It does and the reason is simple. The lining of debris that would be left on the heat exchanger of the new boiler can cause thermal drift in flue gas temperatures and reduce the efficiency of the boiler. It doesn’t need to be a thick layer either – a 1mm thick deposit can cause a thermal drift of 80-90oC that will in turn reduce the efficiency of the appliance’s output by more than 4%.

But that’s enough doom and gloom. How do you solve these issues? Thankfully there is a relatively simple way of fitting new high efficiency boiler plant to an old system – and it’s not rocket science either.

What you need to do is separate the old system from the new boiler plant and the best way of doing this is to use a plate type heat exchanger. This acts as a barrier between the old and the new and allows you to create a brand new mini-environment on the primary side of the heat exchanger onto which the new boiler is installed. By separating the new boiler plant from the old system you enable the water to be treated on boiler side, which will extend the life of the boiler, as well as enabling you to use a modern high efficiency sealed and pressurised boiler. The old system then can remain open vented and as dirty (and leaky maybe) as it was!

The separation allows the boiler to be easily pre-commission cleansed, without the associated problems of cleaning an old system. Power flush type cleaning can work well in a small, domestic context, but is much less successful in a commercial setting, where the volumes of chemicals required and the necessary flushing velocities to get them through the system make the desired results practically unachievable.

For specifiers, using a plate heat exchanger is not only best practice, but is now easy to achieve. For example, at MHS Boilers our new high performance Ultramax PB boiler has an option for an inbuilt plate type heat exchanger within the case – so not only are you able to install a new boiler onto an old system, you don’t even have to find additional space in the boiler room. It’s really that simple. As long as you have a temperature difference between the primary and secondary sides across the heat exchanger, it’ll work. If the temperature difference isn’t there, all you need to do is run the new boiler at a slightly higher temperature than the system or marginally reduce the operating temperature of the existing load circuits – or perhaps a bit of both!

This type of technology and system set up is already becoming popular across the industry and MHS has already provided many new boilers for use on old systems, separated by plate type heat exchangers.

The separation of the old system combined with a new high performance, high efficiency boiler, such as the Ultramax PB from MHS, is a real win-win situation. Not only is it sensible engineering, it also acts as a life insurance policy for your boiler plant – allowing it to operate with the peace of mind that it should last for the life span it was designed for. And with around 78% of the market being in replacement boilers, we think it makes great business sense too.

Media information and photographs

Richard Belcham at Red Cell
Tel: 01376 561666

With wind blowing from the icy north and rain coming in at right angles, rural Britain isn’t most people’s idea of inspiration. However, Peter Gammon, MHS Boiler’s Technical Product Manager, thinks rural communities might just be able to lead the way in heating – and cut down on emissions too.

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Richard Belcham at Red Cell
Tel: 01376 561666

Leading boiler supplier MHS Boilers has secured its largest single order of Strata Streamline boilers.

Over 50 of the high performance boilers have been specified for six of the 14 sites forming part of a Pound78 million project for Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust.

The development is the largest mental health PFI funded project in the UK and is managed by Ryhurst, the PFI division of the Rydon Group. The scheme, which is being built over three years by Rydon Construction, consists of sites across the West Country in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. The work includes the provision of an 80-bed medium secure unit, a range of rehabilitation and psychiatric intensive care facilities, several adult and older adult in-patient units and community resources, together with extensive therapy and administration facilities.

M&E contractor Halsion specified the Strata Streamline boilers for the six inpatient units. Chosen for its combination of high performance, low emissions, simplified design and controls package the Strata Streamline also met the specification in terms of cost effectiveness and ease of installation.

In addition to the boilers, over 20 MHS Tudor water heaters were ordered as well as pressurisation units and control packages.

Ian Bradley, Managing Director, Modular Heating Group plc, said: “This is a great project for MHS to be involved in. We work hard to create products that deliver energy efficiency and powerful performance, but are easy to install.

“This order proves that we have got the combination right and underlines our commitment to our customers – whether they’re the installer, specifier or end-user.”

The Strata Streamline range of wall-mounted gas-fired condensing appliances includes both system and combi boilers. All of the units utilise a well proven helical stainless steel tube heat exchanger with a fully modulating radiant premix burner for high efficiency (up to 108.8%net), low emissions and controllability. There are four sizes within the range with the following outputs of 16kW, 31 kW, 47 kW and 75kW.

Each unit may be room sealed using small diameter flue components and can be used singly or in multiple groups with a cascade manager. The Strata Streamline boilers are engineered to be simple to install and maintain.

Ends.

Media information and photographs
Richard Belcham at Red Cell
Tel: 01376 561666