VOKERA AT SANCTUARY HOUSING
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Outdated pre-fabricated concrete flues, commonly used in 70s construction projects, are a problem for today’s building inspectors because the cement used for joins is easily corroded by flue gases, making the installations potentially unsafe.
When Sanctuary Housing asked Sureway Gas to service boilers and perform proactive safety checks throughout 36 of their flats in Birmingham, they discovered that two of their installations were potentially dangerous. Thankfully home heating specialists, Vokera, were able to devise a unique solution for the problem.
Mick Hickman from Sureway explains: “The concrete flues gave us a major headache. Most of the boilers were installed on the inside walls and as the building was 3 storeys high most of the flues go through multiple dwellings. We considered all options including relocating the boiler installations elsewhere in the flats to outside walls, but that wasn’t really viable.
“We spoke to a number of manufacturers, but Vokera was the one that could offer us a solution which saved valuable time and money.”
As the flue runs on Vokera’s Linea HE gas boiler can go up to 65m, it was ideal for the long distances required for the flats. However, that still didn’t overcome the problem of flue gas condensate damaging the cement joints, so Vokera came up with an innovative plastic flexible flue liner which Sureway could run inside the existing concrete flues.
The Linea HE boilers installed at Sanctuary Housing meet all the requirements of the Energy White Paper and Part L of the Building Regulations introduced in 2005. Vokera’s sales director, Enrico Bracesco says ‘the introduction of high efficiency boilers has meant we now have to consider even more carefully flue options on an existing installation and I’m sure there are many other similar cases like Sanctuary Housing out there.”
Running costs were also an important consideration for Sanctuary, who manage 43,000 homes throughout the UK including houses for rent or sale, shared ownership properties, sheltered housing and homes for those with special needs. Vokera claims that running costs on their Linea HE are 35% less than a conventional boiler, helping to safeguard the environment whilst saving the end-user money. In addition, Linea HE comes with four season functionality as opposed to two, which means that the boiler delivers optimum performance and efficiency throughout the entire year.
All Vokera products come with a comprehensive 2 year warranty and the Vokera technical team can provide pre-sales technical advice as well as after sales technical support for installers.
