Oventrop UK has been successful in securing the contract to supply a wide range of its valves, including TRVs, differential pressure regulating and Aquastrom T Plus domestic hot water services valves for the new St Helens Hospital for St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
St Helens Hospital, which opened in October 2008, is part of a £338 million PFI project for the New Hospitals Consortium of VINCI (Taylor Woodrow Construction) and lnnisfree for the two Merseyside hospitals at St Helens and Whiston. These two hospitals will provide 120,000sq m of accommodation comprising 7,500 rooms, 20 state of the art theatre suites along with the very latest diagnostic facilities in radiology and cardiology.
The new Whiston hospital will also contain a regional specialist burns and plastic surgery unit and the full range of acute in-patient, emergency and out-patient healthcare services in one single building, allowing easy access between departments and clinical adjacencies. There will be 50% single room accommodation with en-suite facilities
Whiston, the second hospital is about three times the size of St Helens Hospital, and is due for completion six months ahead of schedule in April 2010. It will have a similar heating system concept and will also employ Oventrop valves. Engineering services consultants for the project are RPS Gregory, Manchester and the mechanical services engineers are Bailey Building Services, part of the NG Bailey Group.
The project incorporates a substantial amount of off-site manufacture of prefabricated M&E service modules including pipework, ductwork, medical gases and electrical containment to substantially reduce on-site time, costs and health and safety risks.
The new St Helens Hospital building has four floors with outpatients clinics based on three floors, along with diagnostic and treatment facilities including MRI and CT scanning equipment and day case accommodation. The building can be accessed from lower ground and the main entrance is on the ground floor level via a walkway which leads into a large atrium providing access to many of the departments and clinics.
The main plant room is located on the second floor level and supplemented by four roof plant rooms essentially for air handling units. Medium temperature hot water from an existing energy centre enters the main plant room and is reduced to LPHW using a plate heat exchanger. The LPHW is circulated around the hospital to serve 800 ceiling mounted radiant panels equipped with Oventrop AV6 TRVs with wall mounted remote sensors. Differential pressure regulating valves control the pressure across the TRVs. Commissioning sets are strategically located around the heating system together with Oventrop isolation valves.
To eliminate Legionnella risks Aquastrom T Plus multifunction domestic hot water secondary circulation regulating valves are used on all the domestic hot water supplies which simplifies the commissioning stages and provides significant energy savings by thermostatically controlling temperature and flow in the system. As well as providing a hydronic balance of the DHW circuits, the valves also enable automatic pasteurisation when the water temperature in the system is raised above 70ºC.