Menu
Customer Brief
Our customer a popular family friendly tourist attraction contacted OKEL to discuss options to provide a permanent source of heating for the indoor children’s soft play centre that was in a poorly insulated warehouse premises.
The children’s play centre was extremely cold in the winter months however in the summer months it could become very hot and uncomfortable for both children and their parents especially when considering the large numbers of children present at one time and the energetic activities taking place within.
As the premises had no natural gas supply it was currently being heated by a ground floor portable Kerosine oil heater which the customer hired during the colder winter months – the oil heater was proving to be very costly to hire, inefficient to run, and not suitable for the child friendly environment.
Taking into consideration the findings from OKEL’s site survey, we proposed heating the children’s play centre with a high efficiency commercial warm air and destratification heating solution that would introduce approximately 80 kw of heat to the play area.
To ensure a quick warm up time we chose to install Winterwarm fully modulating XR model heaters that would heat the play area to temperature on full power and then modulate down to maintain the desired temperature throughout the remainder of the day. The 2 heaters would be mounted at opposite sides of the soft play centre and mounted 3-4 meters high to give the customer peace of mind that they would be out of reach of the children.
The XR heater also benefits from integral circulation fans that help to recover heat from the ceiling space, return it to the lower ground, and provide an even distribution of warm air throughout the soft play area.
In addition to the heat benefit, OKEL’s chosen heater model had the added advantage of a summer ventilation mode – although not a cooling system as such, the heaters summer ventilation mode provides continuous air circulation, helping to maintain a comfortable temperature in the warmer summer months.
Due to the absence of a natural gas supply on site, OKEL designed a system that would be fuelled by LPG and would require the introduction of an LPG storage facility to the exterior of the customers premises. In support of the LPG solution OKEL arranged for Calor to visit the customers premises to carry out a detailed LPG site survey to assess the feasibility of having an external storage tank, suitable positioning and ground works necessary, and provide information relating to the best energy tariffs available.
In the run up to the warm air heating installation, OKEL’s team worked closely with Calor UK, on behalf of our mutual customer.
Discussions were to ensure the necessary ground works undertaken by the customer complied with gas storage regulations. This was to ensure a smooth and timely installation of the LPG storage tank.
Upon successful installation of the tank, OKEL’s installation team were able to commence the warm air heating installation on site.
The new heating system being installed, tested and commissioned and OKEL delivering against the customers’ initial request of having a fully operational heating system in time for the very busy October half term holidays.