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“I was speaking to a member of the Edinburgh Presbytery not too long ago and they said if only he could get all other churches to use HeatingSave, we’d all be saving a lot of money!”
In west Edinburgh sits the gorgeous and towering St Ninian’s Church of Scotland. The church’s suite comprises 10 halls of various sizes that can accommodate up to 600 people. These halls are rented out to local organisations and host classes from dancing to day nurseries — solidifying the feel of a community.
Our HeatingSave reporter spoke to Ian Kirkpatrick, the current church holder, to find out how St Ninian’s has benefitted from having a HeatingSave Energy Management Systems controlling their heating.
HeatingSave was installed back in 2010, “Our Fabric Convener at the time, who had a PhD in electrical engineering, identified the need,” mentioned Ian. “His aim was to make savings and help with environmental matters by using less fuel.”
The church was heated by two Worcester gas boilers with a simple control system. With activities ranging from sports club to a bridge club for the elderly, “the biggest number of complaints he got was about the temperatures,” said Ian. (A common issue most community venues face).
Mr Kirkpatrick continued, “The problem was one group would reset the thermostat to suit themselves and not set it back. We recognised we needed to take this out of the control of the users and control it centrally. We knew by talking to HeatingSave, we would save money.”
The HeatingSave reporter then asked Ian if he now feels the church uses the system to its full potential, to which the response was “Yes, we control it remotely, we get the hall bookings a month at a time and pre-set everything. I’m sure HeatingSave is capable of more, but it meets our requirements.”
St Ninian’s Church mentioned they have “no problems” using the heating diary system and room booking software. “We have regular users and the default settings to make things easy. There are also sporadic meetings with various groups — the heating diary function saves us a lot of work, compared to our previous system, which took quite a lot of work. HeatingSave is easy to use and I’ve even been able to train others on how to use it too.”
Ian was also happy to mention that the church has “just downloaded the HeatingSave mobile app for when he is not in the building or emergencies — it meets a shortcoming we once had. Now I can do anything, anywhere, any time.”
When asked if they believe they have saved on their fuel bills, Ian quickly replied “Yes, noticeably! I was speaking to a member of the Edinburgh Presbytery not too long ago and they said if only he could get all other churches to use HeatingSave, we’d all be saving a lot of money!”
When asked what Ian likes most about HeatingSave, he said “the ease of setting everything” and the “very friendly, very helpful” Helpdesk.
Finally, Mr Kirkpatrick was asked to end the conversation by summing up HeatingSave: “HeatingSave gives good control and saves money. As simple as that.”
St Ninian’s Church of Scotland
144 St Johns Road
Edinburgh
EH12 8AY
Website: corstorphinestninians.org.uk
Phone: 01313 164777
Email: office@st-ninians.co.uk
East Molesey Methodist Church sits near the south bank of the River Thames in Surrey. A premise consisting of a Victorian church with gallery and a school hall with gallery. There is also a single-storey extension built in the 1970s with three meeting rooms and additional utility rooms. The site uses two boilers on a wet central heating system to provide heating and hot water; one boiler supplying the church and school hall and the other solely for the newer extension.
Following a completed installation of a HeatingSave Building Energy Management System in August of 2019, our reporter caught up with the church’s treasurer, Ian Pegg, to discuss and share his experience.
“We knew we had to update the heating system,” Ian recalls. “We had three main objectives: ease of management, reduce our carbon profile, and improve the comfort level for our users.”
The original boiler controls were basic time clocks that controlled when the heating came on/off. This was essentially a manual system for the church and was time-consuming and tedious to operate. Any change to the heating schedule needed to be manually done to each individual clock.
The HeatingSave BMS system has completely automated the management of the heating system so that it can be run from a PC, laptop or any other device with an Internet connection. “We wanted to reap the benefits sooner rather than later by installing an EMS system ahead of the planned boiler replacement,” explained Ian. The HeatingSave set-up at East Molesey Methodist Church has seven different heating zones so that they can granularly manage heating to meet the church’s aim of cutting its carbon footprint.
Ian said that he was “very happy with the installation.” There were teething problems once the heating season started but they were eventually sorted out. One would normally expect to see an immediate fuel saving and carbon footprint reduction in the first heating season, but as soon as the savings began to be realised the Covid19 pandemic shut down all activities in the church and halls. While services and users have gradually resumed, Ian has no real data to compare his fuel consumption. However, he is expecting to see significant comparative savings this winter.
When asked what made them choose HeatingSave over other companies, Ian said “it was the management system software — others systems did offer this too, but HeatingSave looked easier to us to use and to manage.”
When asked about the quality of the HeatingSave Helpdesk Ian remarked “We have used the HeatingSave help desk and they are always very helpful, and were especially supportive when we configured our system.” This is an important point for the HeatingSave team as they always want to leave their customers assured they’ll always have the support they need.
Happy with his decision to choose HeatingSave, Ian concluded “it all went pretty smoothly and we have even given HeatingSave some customer feedback on how they can improve their system further.” The good news for Ian is that HeatingSave are considering his recommendations ready for the winter heating season.
East Molesey Methodist Church
Manor Road
East Molesey
Surry
KT8 9JU
Website: emmc.org.uk
Email: info@emmc.org.uk
Photo Credit: Hassocks5489
Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church is a congregation of the Church of Scotland with sanctuary and halls in St John’s Road, Corstorphine, Edinburgh, 3 and a half miles west of the city centre.
The beautiful church was originally built around 1844, but it has undergone no less than 6 developments ever since, in response to the congregation significantly growing in numbers. The latest major segments, the east and west transepts, were added in 1914, but further work was done later on as well, in order to extend the available space.
Currently, Corstorphine St Ninian’s Parish Church will house up to 800 parishioners during usual services, but its premises are also used for a variety of additional activities involving the local community.
The church halls are heated by 2 gas-fired boilers providing the necessary hot water for heating multiple radiators.
Mr. Lex Hope, the church’s site manager, recalls that, around 3 years ago, the church’s leaders started to consider the prospect of installing an energy management system that would enable them to “reduce energy consumption” and “adapt to the seasonal and immediate changes in outdoors temperature” while also offering “easier management” of the whole central heating system. (more…)
The church site comprises the main church building, used for religious services, and a large hall with 5 side-rooms, used by various church organisations and external activity groups. Around 50 worshippers attend church services every Sunday, while occupancy during the week varies significantly.
Formby URC uses two different heating systems. The main hall and side rooms are heated using a conventional gas-fired boiler and radiators, while the church sanctuary uses gas-powered fan heaters, accompanied by overhead infrared electric heaters.
“Before HeatingSave, we used 7-day time clocks to control the heating systems. That was highly inefficient, because the halls needed to be heated for different groups, at different times. Some of the groups met fortnightly or monthly and the heating was on for a long periods when no-one was using the church, so we were wasting a lot of energy and money. To get around this, we had to manually adjust the clock all the time, which was not exactly an ideal situation for us.” Jim Crawford, Treasurer and Facilities Manager at the Formby United Reformed Church, told the HeatingSave reporter.
Most time clocks cannot vary the times throughout the week, wasting fuel at weekends, when offices, rooms or buildings are often unoccupied. Even a 7 day clock cannot cater for Bank Holidays, Holidays, shut downs or periods when the building is empty.
With HeatingSave you can set room temperatures to suit your specific requirements, giving you 100% control of the heating to meet your needs in summer, winter or throughout the year. You can even superimpose your pattern of building usage onto the heating/cooling patterns to perfectly match so that the energy usage is minimized. This normally means the building will be warm in the morning when people first arrive and then slightly cooler during the day when everyone is working.
“We started looking for a better control system in April 2014” said Jim, “I did a fair bit of research online and came across the HeatingSave website. The technical information provided there seemed to indicate that the HeatingSave Building Energy Management System was just what we needed.” he told the HeatingSave reporter.
I have also read through your testimonials, especially the one provided by the Corstorphine St Ninian’s church in Scotland, and decided to contact you for a presentation. Your representatives, especially one of your directors, were very helpful in explaining the benefits of HeatingSave and customizing the system to meet our specific requirements.
Our Fabric Committee were not that easily convinced, but in the end they saw the clear advantages in terms of heating control and energy expenditure that the Building Energy Management System would be able to deliver. They were also keen to adopt a green energy policy.
We used legacy funds to finance the costs of the installation, and this is the avenue I strongly recommend for any church or place of worship interested in deploying HeatingSave as the pay-back period is too long for a normal business case, given that church energy costs are typically smaller than those of schools and businesses.”
The HeatingSave Building Energy Management System was installed in the second half of 2014 and the process was “relatively trouble free”, apart from a few minor issues related to the system’s setup, which rapidly sorted out with the help of the HeatingSave Help Desk and engineers.
The system consists of two web-enabled, Linux-based HeatingSave T3520-LN Building Energy Management System Controllers, accompanied by multiple temperature sensors. One of the two controllers includes Zig 2.4 Mhz wireless mesh network wireless technology (T3520-LNZ), which will enable the addition of Wireless Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) or other Zig 2.4 Mhz wireless mesh network devices (air quality sensors, PIRs, etc.).
Members of the Formby United Reformed Church Fabric Committee were trained on using HeatingSave. “Training was delivered by the engineer who installed the system. I and several others members of the committee took part in the training and the overall quality was very good.” Jim told the HeatingSave reporter.
“I managed to gain a much deeper understanding of HeatingSave by using it on a regular basis. I then used the HeatingSave User Manual to create a set of instructions customized for our system. In this way, I can make sure that the other members of the community will be able to use it to its full extent even when I’m away”, Jim added.
Due to the complex nature of the heating system in the church, Jim worked with HeatingSave experts to customize the system in order to optimize the way the area is heated. He explained: “The system has been set up in such a way as to have a 1 degree differential between the set point assigned to the fan heaters and the one assigned to the infrared heaters.
The gas fan heaters are controlled using the HeatingSave algorithm – they will start at exactly the right time to ensure that the correct temperature is reached by the time the event is scheduled to start.
However, the infrared electric heaters will only start up to 10 minutes before the time of the service and top-up the temperature if required. During a very cold Sunday, they might start again several times during the planned event (service) as well, but during a normal Sunday they won’t start at all.
By using HeatingSave to control the system, we make sure that the more expensive infrared heaters only work while they are actually needed, thus reducing the overall energy consumption, while in the same time maintaining a very good level of comfort for all the people inside the church” he concluded.
HeatingSave is the worlds 1st off-the-shelf Building Energy Management System and Monitoring (BEMAM) system that replaces your existing heating time-clock or BMS system to take control of and better manage and reduce your energy use. HeatingSave manages heating boiler(s), pumps, valves, immersion heaters, heat pumps and air conditioning units.
Asked what he likes most about the HeatingSave system, Jim promptly replied: “The main reason why we have chosen to install HeatingSave is that it delivers a high degree of flexibility in terms of heating control. By having better control over the heating systems, we are not only saving money, we also prevent the waste of energy and contribute to saving the environment.”
Since the HeatingSave system was installed at the Formby United Reformed Church, Jim has contacted the Help Desk line on a number of occasions. He provided very positive feedback on their activity: “I have had a good experience dealing with the help-desk staff. They are very flexible and able to work around my schedule.”
While very happy with the level of control delivered by the current system, Jim is considering adding a number of HeatSave Wireless TRVs to the radiators located in the church’s side rooms and creating several additional heating zones. The aim is to “extend the level of control and further reduce unnecessary heating”.
The HeatSave TRV wirelessly “talks” via a Zig 2.4 Mhz wireless mesh network network to the Zig 2.4 Mhz wireless mesh network-enabled HeatingSave controller allowing one to retro-fit HeatingSave to their existing heating system, zoning each room or area and drastically cutting your heating costs.
Would Formby United Reformed Church recommend HeatingSave to other churches and places of worship? “I would recommend the HeatingSave Building Energy Management System to all other churches who have an energy-saving agenda or simply want to attain a superior level of control over their heating system.” Jim told the HeatingSave reporter.
Summing up his experience of HeatingSave, Jim said: “HeatingSave was the only company to offer a product delivering such an extensive level of functionality at a very affordable price.”
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Customer Information
Formby United Reformed Church
111 Church Road
Formby
Liverpool
L37 3ND
Email: jim.crawford@talktalk.net
Web: http://www.formbyurc.co.uk/
