The Douay Martyrs Roman Catholic School, located in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is a secondary school and sixth form with academy status. Serving 1,500 students, the school has two campuses, Arrowsmith and Cardinal Hume, located on either side of Long Lane in Ickenham. The school’s original building, located at the Arrowsmith campus, dates back to 1962. The decision was taken in 2016 to completely refurbish the heating in the building’s sports hall, to bring it up to modern standards and improve efficiency.
Objectives and Challenges
Despite its name, the sports hall is a multi-functional space used not only for sports activities such as tennis and basketball but also for school assemblies and exams. With wooden floors, towering clear walls, and shallow windows immediately beneath the high ceiling, this vast space was previously warmed by underfloor heating but this system failed in 2016, resulting in leaks and floor damage.
The school didn’t want a like-for-like replacement, because the floor damage had shaken its confidence in underfloor heating. The usual alternative to floor heating, wall-mounted radiators, was also ruled out because the walls needed to be kept clear for safety.
Key Considerations
- Speed of installation: Ensuring a new heating source and a replacement floor were in place in time for students.
- Safe location: Placng the heating source safely away from active sports activity beyond the reach of sports equipment such as basketballs or tennis balls.
- Reliability: Avoiding the disruption suffered as a result of the faulty underfloor heating the school previously had in place.
The Solution
The fact that wall-mounted radiators and underfloor heating were both ruled out, so the sports hall’s vast space would have to be heated from above.
After assessment, it was decided that there was clearly sufficient height in the hall to accommodate ceiling heating without placing it at risk of damage from wayward tennis balls or basketballs. Ceiling-mounted radiant heating panels are ideally suited to rooms with high ceilings.
In many applications, the panels are incorporated so unobtrusively within the fabric of the building that occupiers are unaware that they are even there. Equally, however, radiant panels can also be free-hanging, designed to make a great style statement and a feature of the space.
The solution needed to be both efficient and lightweight in order to minimise time and cost, be keenly priced to stay within the school’s budget.
The Product: ZIP Radiant Panels
Zehnder’s ZIP radiant ceiling panels are 320 mm wide and available in standard lengths of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 metres. Longer strips can be created by connecting multiple individual elements in a row.
Rather than heating the entire air volume of a room, needlessly wasting energy by warming-up outer walls and ceilings, radiant heating warms only the solid objects in its ‘line of sight’, such as people, objects and furniture.
Key Considerations
- Unrestricted use of floor and wall space.
- Fast response to desired temperatures changes with heating and cooling effects immediately noticeable.
- Even, comfortable heat distribution throughout the space.
- Free choice of energy source.
- Energy savings of more than 40%
- No maintenance or servicing costs.
- Lightweight construction and flexible fixing system, simplifying installation process.
- Corrosion resistance according to DIN 50017, with special model available for wet rooms.
“The simplicity of installation, the impressive aesthetic and the additional benefits such as reduced noise and energy savings meant that the Zehnder panels offered everything we needed for the project. We wouldn’t hesitate to use this solution in other projects or recommend them to others.” said Lee Maon, DHP Property Consultants.
