Warmworld for your cold parishioners

by Rev’d S H Carter, Vicar

It is getting on for four years since the church councils at both St. Andrew’s and St. Peter’s churches were looking for a more efficient way of controlling their respective heating systems.

We made an approach to Gary Belgium at Warmworld.

From the very first telephone contact the company could not have been more helpful, and their support has continued since, to help find the most effective approach to heating large buildings with less-than modern water-borne heating systems.

Neither of our systems has any requirement for hot water so, at St. Peter’s, we chose a two-zone IHC controller so that the church and church hall could be controlled separately. We also installed averaging temperature sensors as the areas covered in both church and hall are quite large.

At St. Andrew’s we chose a single zone IHC controller as there is only the church to heat. Once again, we also installed averaging temperature sensors.

The equipment itself was very easy to install ourselves, but I do have a background in electrical and electronic equipment. However, if an electrical technician has to be employed, it would not take a great deal of time and effort to install and set up.

At both churches we have a series of programs set into the twelve user-defined program slots in the controllers. This enables us easily to choose between programs depending on what activities are taking place at church or in the hall and when. Once the basic timing has been set into the programs, they can then be changed over as necessary.

We connect a laptop computer to the systems to make the changes, as we find it easier this way, but it can be done on the controller buttons if necessary.

It has really worked out well for us. It did take a bit of getting used to because of the high hysteresis inherent in such systems used in large buildings but, with advice from Warmworld we have got used to how they are best used.

There is no doubt that we have saved on our gas consumption since installing the controllers. It is not very easy to quantify this because of the varied use made of the buildings, and the varied winter weather over the past couple of years, but we reckon that we have reduced consumption by between 17% and 21%.

• For more information visit http://www.warmworld.co.uk/ or phone Gary on 0117 9498800