North East Lincolnshire Council have partnered with ENGIE to identify energy saving opportunities across their portfolio of buildings. One project identified was Grimsby LC. The existing gas fired boilers at Grimsby Leisure centre were extremely old, inefficient and coming to the end of their life. One of the three boilers had stopped working, and the others had been repaired many times. The difficulty with the situation however was that the plant room was located at the top of the building, and away from the side of the building, meaning that getting heavy plant & equipment in and out of the plant room was difficult.

Through the tender process, NerG identified a number of value engineering opportunities for the project.

One of these was to remove a different boiler to the one originally identified, and re-use the plinth, flue & heating pipework that the boiler was using.

Following correct testing & removal of any asbestos in the plant room by a licensed operator, NerG took to deconstructing the old gas cast iron boiler, which is no mean feat in itself. 

NerG then bought in a specialist hi-ab lifting crane to remove all the sections of the old boiler and then to deliver the new boilers and associated equipment from the car park right up to the door of the plant room, 4 stories up and 30m from the side of the building. 

We then installed 5 No. Ideal Evo-Max 2 150kW gas boilers in a cascade arrangement, all feeding into a centralised flue and header for simple integration into the existing plant room. 

We managed the operation so that there was only a 4 hour downtime in the system. When we started the project, the client had been notified this down-time could be 3-4 weeks, so this was a considerable cost saving to the client as operations in the Leisure Centre were not affected by the transition from one heating system to another. 

The leisure centre now have a brand new set of condensing boilers that will provide incredibly efficient heating to the leisure centre for many years to come.