Project Description
Client: Hightown Housing Association
Location: Bowling Court, Chesham
Project Time Table: 3 Days Over 4 Months
Year Completed: 2017
Value: £2,500 – £3,500
Commision: Procurement Department
Bowling Court comprises of three a-joining tower blocks. Each block is serviced by a central stairwell serving three floors with two apartments per floor. A total of eighteen residential apartments or approximately 120,000 square feet of space across the dwellings.
The Challenges
The UK Government have been encouraging Housing Associations to go Green. The government policy works by offering a one time payment per dwelling to improve its carbon footprint on the environment. The challenge is to implement a cost effective strategy within the grant provided. Large communal dwellings such as apartment blocks offer the greatest opportunity.
Project Details
FINITA helped a Housing Association make huge savings as part of a Government Green initiative
The Task
Hightown Housing Association, Hemel Hempstead saw an opportunity to improve standards for one of the properties in their portfolio. Using the government incentive, they planned to replace old inefficient oil burners with Fujitsu air-source heating pumps in Bowling Court, Chesham, an eighteen apartment complex.
One of the features of the Fujitsu system is the remote monitoring and reporting. However this requires a site wide wireless internet connection so that each pumps thermostat could be interrogated for a monthly efficiency report.
Finding a satisfactory wifi solution that could cover all of the apartments inside the limited budget was proving difficult until FINITA stepped in.
Next Step
We began by understanding Hightown’s budgetary requirements, how the Fujitsu system worked and how the wireless would be used by maintenance engineers for monitoring and reporting. We also visited Bowling Court and conducted a site survey which including tests aimed at helping us understand the effective range of wifi within the building.
Armed with the necessary information we were able to put forward a proposal that met HighTown Housing requirements for this building.
The Result
Our thorough information gathering approach combined with our extensive technical knowledge would ultimately lead to massive savings for Hightown. We later discovered our equipment and installation cost was 40% below the next best wifi proposal and best of all a huge 90% less to run annually on the cost of internet access.
This result meant that Hightown had a solution that came in under the budget available and they could move ahead with upgrading the block to a green environmentally friendly solution inline with the government’s low carbon footprint program.
At FINITA we are passionate about delivering meaningful results backed by first class service and support.
