Bridgewater House, built in 1771, is a classic two-and-a-half storey Georgian house designated a Grade II listed building. It is near the lower end of a line of 10 locks leading from the Runcorn basin of the Bridgewater Canal to the River Mersey. Originally built for the use of the Duke of Bridgewater, it has since been used for various purposes and has now been converted into offices.
More recently, in 1998, a fire damaged the roof and many of the rooms; the building was subsequently repaired and restored and is now owned by Bridgewater Property Management, which uses it partly for its own purposes and leases the rest of the building as offices to other businesses.
Runcorn-based heating engineer Dave Winrow, who runs the business with his son Benjamin, was asked by the company, in 2012, to come up with an energy efficient solution for the building’s heating and hot water as the owners were alarmed by ever rising fuel bills.
Winrow went to look at the old system that comprised two combis and two boilers. “The archaic boiler system, although very dilapidated was still working, but as it was 10 years old or more it definitely needed replacing with a system that would be easier on running costs.”
Winrow decided to install three Rinnai high efficiency commercial instant water heaters, effectively making up a tri-flow hot water package, teamed with two Rinnai E32 boilers to provide hot water and heating to all floors. The installed system reduced the fuel costs by 200%.
Since then, the units have been serviced every year, without fail. But the units have never, ever had a single part replaced – that’s approaching 14 years of service providing temperature accurate hot water.
Says Ben Winrow, “The Rinnai continuous flow water heaters are a fully modulating 54kW unit that gives constant hot water produced separately from the boiler on secondary return. In summer the boiler doesn’t need to fire up at all. It is a prime example of a modulated unit at its best as the unit’s 50kw capability can modulate down to 6kw. It is very clever because it knows exactly how much gas to use to heat the water due to its multi solenoid burner, so it saves fuel and money. With other water heaters they are either full on or off”.
“The site saw heating and water bills tumble from £4,500 per annum to just £1500 in the first year of installation. Over the 14 years the savings run to over six figures”.
The Rinnai Sensei N series succeeded the HD range and achieved the same standard of durability and longevity. All appliances are manufactured under strict guidelines of ISO 9001 quality management and ISO 14001 environmental management and come with full manufacturers’ warranty.
Rinnai N Sensei Series continuous flow water heaters are designed to provide domestic and commercial access to vast volumes of cost-effective, clean and temperature controlled hot water. Rinnai aim to supply UK customers with practical, economic and technical solutions for water heating and building heat.
The Rinnai Sensei N Series is the first ever continuous flow hot water heating unit manufactured with stainless steel heat exchangers to be available in the UK - this provides a greatly extended working life at optimum performance to each of the four models in the range.
The four models are: the N1600i giving 954 litres per hour; the N1600e (external) also giving 954 litres per hour (at 50 degrees); the N1300i giving 775 litres per hour and the N1300e also giving 775 litres per hours of temperature controlled at 50 degrees. The two 1600s have load profiles of XXL and are water efficiency class A rated, while the 1300s are load profile XL and are also water efficiency class A rated.
Find out more about our N-Series commercial condensing water heaters here.
Other features include:
- Flue up to 30+ metres for concentric
- Turbo Fan
- Built-in controller as standard on both internal and external models
- Cascade Cable assembly allows up to 24 water heaters to be connected and function as one total and complete system. Any number of N-series Rinnai water heaters can be manifolded together enabling the largest capacities on the market
- Built in flue damper
- Air inlet filter
- Frost Protection – minus 15°C on the internal versions and minus 20°C on the external versions
- New PCB Design
- Controller as standard – Lockable, set up of appliance, temperature set up to 75°C
- Maintenance Monitor for engineers
