Archie Kidd boiler replaced (*) with another oil boiler pioneer
Our customer lives in Kent in a 1890s set of railway construction workers cottages. When the property was refurbished in 2004, he specified an Archie Kidd (Thermal) VHE Model 1 oil boiler. This was before the UK Government had latched onto condensing boilers being the future. In fact Archie Kidd had designed his Model 2 prototype in 1959 as part of his strive for energy to be conserved and not wasted needlessly. The Kidd Model 1 should last in excess of 30 years, so it was a shame to remove this now discontinued British leader in the history of heating […]
Some Church installations 2016:
We have been very busy over the last year, converting a number of church campuses over to Honeywell Evohome zoning, as well as in many cases updating the boiler plant at the same time. Evohome was originally designed for domestic use, allowing a room by room control of heating. We’ve found that sophisticated commercial heating control systems are great if you employ a dedicated plant room manager – but for many light commercial applications, it is simply too complex for those expected to control it. There are huge energy savings to be made by only heating the areas in use at certain […]
LPG boiler and an Evohome internet control system
We’re in a very rural part of Horsham, in Sussex, for this case study. We’re pleased to say that this is the third new boiler installation job we’ve carried out for this family in two years. Although only around 2% of our installation work features here in our case studies (because one of our boiler renewals looks much like the next, and it takes so long writing it all up), both jobs can be seen on our blog because they were unusual in different respects. We’re replacing an LPG fired (Liquid Petroleum Gas; in this case, Propane) combi boiler in […]
Complex house heating system of the future (in 1998) gets updated
For this case study, we are in Ealing, West London. Our customer rang us to say he had inadvertently bought a large house with a woefully complex heating system around 8 years ago. The first time he viewed the house, it was perfect – but they never went into the garage. On the second visit, he popped his head into the garage area, and found it completely full of commercial plant, and a ambient temperature of over 30C. Since then, many a central heating specialist has escaped having seen the garage; apparently they are brimming with confidence until the door […]
Relocating all the equipment in the cellar
Our customer, near Woolwich, in South East London, has a charming Victorian house in a quiet residential street. There is a substantial cellar that has recently been lowered and made more usable. Our brief was to find a way of moving all boiler and hot water cylinder equipment into the basement, to enable the upper floor to be remodelled, the kitchen enlarged and also a possible loft extension to take place. Ideally, the boiler would be fitted in the basement, together with a new mains pressure unvented cylinder. This presented us with a set of problems, mainly in terms of […]
Listed Building in Kent gets a new boiler and 12 zone iPhone control
The brief was to replace an old Potterton boiler in the basement with a new unit, and make the system more efficient. Spread over 3 floors and a cellar, this building is Grade 2 listed, and therefore represents a challenge when alterations to building services are required. We looked into replacing the boiler in the cellar with a modern condensing unit, and relining the chimney. However, there were adjacent chimney pots that were in use, and also there were plans for the cellar which meant that our customer would prefer the boiler to be resited to an otherwise unused store […]
Mono Evohome gets switched into Colour Evohome – plus 35% saving on gas bills
Our customer, a music composer and publisher, had engaged ourselves to replace their Ideal Classic boiler for a new Worcester Bosch 15Ri in early 2013, and asked for the new Honeywell Evohome to be fitted when it was launched this year (2014). We returned to service the boiler and upgrade the Evohome Mono (as it is now called) to the new Colour version, and add hot water control to the Megaflo HW cylinder. The new colour controller with iPhone control offers 12 zones instead of 8, so most rooms in this property are now individually temperature controlled. A confessed gadget […]
Listed building gets a new boiler and Evohome zoning
Our customer bought a fantastic building constructed in 1868, located in Carshalton, Surrey. Listed inside and outside, it was built to the requirements of the author Mark Rutherford (real name William Hale White). It incorporates many interesting features, for instance the inside walls are three bricks thick, because Mr White required silence and solitude in his work. The chimneys were all internal to the building, to minimise heat loss. A Victorian eco house, no less. We were asked to upgrade the existing installation of heating, which dated back to the 1980s. Although the radiators and pipework were in reasonable condition, […]
Worcester Bosch Warm Air?
Interesting split level house in Kenley For this post we are in the hills of Kenley. Surrey (UK). Our customer has recently bought this house, which is on four levels and was constructed in the early 1970s. The brief was to renew the warm air system (the customer did not want radiators) but put in a more efficient system that could also heat up a much larger hot water cylinder quickly. The existing system used a Lennox gas warm air heater and an electric heated hot water cylinder. The customer had noticed that although there was a prominent air duct […]
No place like home, EvoHome
This is a post closer to home. In fact it is my home! Our house in Edenbridge, Kent is heated by an Archie Kidd (Thermal) Ltd oil fired boiler, and has around 26 radiators. It was built in 1894 and heating it is an expensive business, because our insulation is hard to improve. In 2005 we installed Honeywell Hometronic. This is a system that uses remote control radiator valves to divide the house into 16 areas of controlled heating. This enabled us to reduce the heating level in rooms we weren’t using in the day, but warm them in the […]
