Hospitals present particular challenges in terms of water heating, as Ian Vallely discovered.
The healthcare sector is vital to the UK water heating industry because it includes a large portfolio of properties of differing sizes and occupancies - ranging from community health centres and residential care homes to large NHS Trust hospitals - all of which demand vast quantities of hot water for long periods during the day, throughout the whole year.


A reliable and efficient means of hot water generation is a must for these applications in order to provide security of supply.

So, the healthcare sector is crucial to the water heating industry. But water heating is also crucial to healthcare, largely because of safety. Legionella is a potential problem in any application involving heated water, but the young and elderly and those who are ill are particularly vulnerable. And these, of course, are precisely the sorts of people you find in hospitals and other medical facilities.

Direct-fired water heaters sustain the stored water at a pre-set temperature - usually of 60 deg C - and this should remove the risk of the growth of legionella bacteria.
But the drivers for change in the healthcare sector don't stop with the need to kill bugs. A number of hospitals are changing from pressurised steam systems to low and medium temperature hot water systems.

The question is: How should the demand for hot water be delivered? One possible way is via renewable sources. Solar hot water heating can be used in conjunction with direct-fired condensing storage water heaters to further improve the carbon footprint.

Solar hot water heating is particularly suitable for applications where there is an all year round need for hot water. So, solar thermal solutions are of particular benefit from a carbon reduction perspective to end users such as NHS Trusts where there may be environmental sustainability targets within their agenda, and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

However, solar water heating is not the only option. Combined heat and power units have been widely used in the past on large NHS Trust sites to produce electricity and steam simultaneously.

The availability in more recent years of lower output CHP products has allowed smaller properties to gain access to the benefits of the technology, and examples already exist in the UK where the concept has been applied in residential care homes operated by NHS Trusts and Housing Groups. Many argue that the use of low carbon technologies such as heat pumps and solar thermal water heating need to be put forward and championed more by designers.

The trouble is that, often, the short-term capital costs are being considered over the life costs of products. A hospital, for example, has a large heating and hot water requirement that is often designed with inefficient systems.

Nonetheless, many argue that the use of heat pumps and solar thermal is an attractive solution, as these product technologies mean that they are installed with a long-term cost effective view, delivering excellent savings to the end user in running costs and long-term life costs.