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WATER TREATMENT – A COMMERCIAL NECESSITY
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'clean and protect' saves money, energy, emissions and maintenance costs
All heating systems, however large or small, will work better with good quality circulating water in them. That's simply a fact. It's accepted by every boiler manufacturer, renewable heating manufacturer and under floor heating manufacturer – there's really no one who will argue with that.
Whether it's a traditional heating system driven by one or more commercial boilers, with radiators as the means of emitting heat, or a renewable heating system driven by a solar thermal system or by a ground source or air source heat pump with under floor heating as the main source of sharing heat – water treatment products will ensure that the system operates as efficiently as possible, saving energy use, saving money and reducing emissions – it's all about cleaning and protecting the investment in a heating system.
A clean system is an efficient and reliable system and ensuring the system is clean at the outset and inhibited or protected to keep it that way, is an important consideration. Renewable systems offer their own challenges with solar thermal systems needing to cope with extremes of temperatures from well below freezing up to in excess of 230 C and heat pump installations needing to be prepared to resist microbiological growth as bacteria and fungi thrive on the glycol content of the glycol based heat transmission fluid.
So having agreed that water treatment is a sensible necessity, it makes sense to use the best water treatment products you can buy. There's little point skimping on what for most systems, will be a very small part of the total system outlay. By using cheap water treatment products, you may in fact be putting the heating system it's in, at risk. By selecting high quality products you also buy into the opportunity to purchase a wider range of products, ones that offer increased robustness to deliver better protection and value added products such as test kits that allow you to quickly and simply test a system to see if it already has water treatment products circulating and also the level of dosage required to give the system the right level of protection.
Building Regulations accepts that water treatment is essential in the heating systems in our homes, so it's easy to recognise how important it is for larger living spaces to benefit from water treatment protection – nursing homes, sheltered housing developments and the like, or for commercial and industrial properties – schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, factories, offices – where you simply can't risk the heating system shutting down because of blockages, or debris in the circulating water, or in renewable systems, if the glycol-based circulating fluid degrades prematurely and fails to deliver the efficient heating it's designed to deliver.
The benefits of using high quality water treatment products – recommended by leading heating and equipment manufacturers by name – are many and various but put simply, they save money, save time, reduce CO2 emissions, result in the use of less energy and a vital argument that sometimes gets overlooked – significantly reduce the maintenance costs associated with heating systems and their components.
For commercial users, these products can contribute towards reducing a company's CRC commitment costs and with a larger than anticipated emphasis towards commercial premises in the recently announced Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) – it could have a major role to play here too.
All boiler and renewable heating manufacturers – domestic or commercial – accept that the two key problems they face are poor quality installation practices and poor quality circulating water and glycol based fluids in the heating systems. They address the first problem by investing significantly in training programmes for the people who install their boilers and they encourage solutions to the second by recommending by name the water treatment products they want to see used alongside their products.
Making your heating system operate energy efficiently, day in, day out in this day and age, is essential. Extending the life of the heating system is vital. Using good quality water treatment products clearly makes huge sense.
