Kinetics Group confirmed as main contractor

I had a productive meeting with Kinetics Group today and have decided to use them as the main contractor for this project. Kinetics provide a variety of services to social housing providers and are already a preferred contractor for Warwick District Council which means that we are building on already established relationships. Kinetics are able to offer us a one stop shop service with their in house teams of builders, electricians and plumbers and in addition will organise specialist subcontractors where required, arrange for MCS accreditation on both solar and biomass systems and they will oversee all health and safety requirements. For more information on Kinetics Group visit their website www.kineticsgroup.co.uk

The full list of contractors now involved with this project are confirmed as:

• Kinetics Group – for all general building, electrical and plumbing work plus the solar thermal, solar PV and biomass boiler installations
• Windhager – for supply and commissioning of the wood pellet boiler (working in conjunction with the Kinetics team)
• Bowater – for the supply and installation of the windows and doors
• Structherm – for the supply of the external wall cladding
• Transcast – for the installation of the external wall cladding
• Wattbox – for the heating controls and data acquisition which is required for the monitoring phase

We hope to start work on-site in July and are currently liaising with tenants regarding a schedule for the work.

I have been thinking hard about the best fuel feeding solution for the wood pellet boiler. Initially I had intended to fit a fully automated system where pellets would be fed into the boiler from a large outside fuel store. Main main reasons for this were to enable bulk fuel deliveries (which helps to keep fuel costs low) and also because it presented a more convenient solution for the tenants.

JFC wood pellet bin

I wanted a fully weatherproofed store which could stand alone outside (rather like an oil tank in a similar but more traditional setting) and I had found a product that would be suitable for this application which is made by an Irish company JFC: the Wood Pellet Bin.

However I soon realised that the JFC bin would be far too big. With a capacity for storing 3 tonnes of pellets at each property it could store enough fuel for around 2 years! It is my understanding that storing pellets for this long would be detrimental to the fuel quality.

GEOplast GEOtop II

The GEOtop II, from Austrian based GEOplast, is a similar product which stores half as much fuel as the JFC bin but is actually quite a lot more expensive to buy.

Further consultation with the Beausale tenants highlighted their concerns about the visual impact of a large outside fuel store. They were also concerned about the space that would be taken up in the garden. We talked about burying tanks underground and this could be feasible but likely to be too costly. And all of this led me to believe that a manually fed boiler may be the better solution in this instance.

Manually fed boilers come with an integral hopper which usually can store around 150kg of pellets. Pellets are then fed into the boiler from the hopper automatically. So having a “manual feed” doesn’t mean you have to be there feeding pellets manually to the boiler every time there is a demand for heat. But it begs the question: How frequently will the Beausale tenants have to fill their hopper?

So I revisited my calculations on the expected fuel consumption for these properties and tried to work out what their rate of consumption would be on a weekly basis. From this I could estimate the number of times that a 150kg hopper would need to be refilled per month. This is summarised in the table below:

I hope that the Beausale tenants will be happy with a manually fed solution. The pellets will now be delivered in 10-20kg bags so they should be easy to lift. And we will aim to provide a weatherproof store for keeping  good supply of bags at the house, somewhere close to the boiler.

BSRIA would like to revisit to try and capture some better quality thermal images. For this they have requested that the tenants switch their heating onto full for a constant 24hours before they come to take the images. This is all in aid of acheiving a 10°C temperature difference between inside and out which is required for the thermal imaging to work.

I’m not very happy that the onus is being placed on the tenants to make sure the conditions are right for testing. In particular are the tenants themselves expected to pay for this heating  which is so clearly not needed at this time of year? The Beausale tenants have also raised concerns over health their homes would be uncomfortably warm for 24 hours. We await to hear back from BSRIA about this but I can’t think of what the solution might be.

I have made a good contact with Bowater Building Products who I am very pleased to confirm will be supplying the windows and doors for RIFF. Bowater are a long established PVC-U extrusion company making windows and doors alongside a range of other building products. They will be showcasing their new to market “Smart Sash” windows. These windows are not available to buy yet but I’m promised that they will be ready just in time for RIFF!

The Smart Sash system will meet the very demanding u-value target of 0.9W/m²K by incorporating insulating breakers in the frames and triple glazing with an argon/air filled combination. And because Bowater have been making PVC-U windows and doors for years they are extremely competetive in terms of costs. They have even promised me a discount which is fantastic news for the project as a whole.

More details on the specific products will be posted as soon as I have them. Meanwhile you can visit their website http://www.bowaterwindowsanddoors.co.uk.

Another busy day onsite with various contractors meeting up for a tour and Q&A session. This will enable them to firm up quotes, hopefully with everything included!  Once again a big thanks to the tenants for being so accomodating and for providing valuable input regarding finishing details etc.

We hope to be in a position to make final selections regarding contractors by mid-June and then have work commence onsite late July. We talked about the potential for splitting the work into two phases with heating and renewable technologies in one phase and insulation measures in another phase. The idea being that the two phases follow one another but with a week’s rest inbetween which I believe will make it easier to fulfill the health and safety legislation requirements. We will confirm this plan nearer the time.

Received news from BSRIA today that the thermal images they took last month did not come out very well and they would like to revisit the site to try again. My understanding is that for these images to work the temperature difference between inside and outside of the property has to be at least 10°C. I think they will struggle to acheive this temperature difference as the days are getting warmer.

Wattbox today provided us with their confirmed proposal and quotation. They will be providing the Wattbox heating controller together with the data aquisition services as required for the montioring programme. I am very pleased to be able to include Wattbox in this project and look forward to seeing how this innovative heating controller works in real life.

The great thing about RIFF is that we have two identical houses in terms of constructions and systems but two very different families living in each one. As the Wattbox is designed to learn from the behaviour of the occupants it will really be put through its paces as in each house it will have a different behavioural patter to learn from. For more information on Wattbox, please visit the website http://www.wattbox.com.

Wattbox interface

Meanwhile, have a look at the image on the right which shows the latest version of the Wattbox user interface (currently in development). Wattbox will provide a uniquely simple interface to replace the traditional timeclock and thermostat with simple buttons for “more heat” or “less heat” and one also for “more hot water”.

I received the first confirmed quote from an installer today which I will have to review alongside the others once I receive them.

We had a very busy day onsite at Beausale today as several different contractors met with me onsite for a tour and Q&A session. This will give them a chance to gather the information they need to provide a firm quote for the refurbishement works.

I was a little disappointed that not all of the contractors brought along the relevant people with them in order to provide a firm quote. So we will have to arrange further site visits for as soon as possible. I am keen to have several different quotes for comparison.

We also had a representative from BSRIA onsite today who was there to conduct air tightness testing and thermal imaging. This work is required as part of the monitoring and data collection programme which is being managed by the Energy Saving Trust. Further air tightness testing and thermal imaging is planned for after the rennovation works are complete. It will be interesting to see the comparison in the before and after cases and I’ll be sure to post images/results as soon as I have them.

I’d like to thank the tenants for letting us traipse around their homes all day and for generally being very supportive.

Today saw the official launch of Retrofit for the Future and you can read the official press release from the Technology Strategy Board here.

Encraft also wrote our own press release which you can read here (PDF 464kB).

RIFF is not the only Retrofit for the Future project that Encraft are involved with. We are also managing a project in Birmingham in conjunction with Balsall Heath Housing Cooperative which you can read about here: http://inspirationbirmingham2020.com.