The Project
St Thomas Church in Woolton Hill, Newbury were looking for a new electric church heating system to help them hit the Church of England’s net zero carbon initiative.
We were kindly asked to carry out a site visit by the electrician Ed Green of Hannington & Green. Here’s how it all unfolded.
It is always a pleasure working with the team at Hannington & Green
Under pew heaters provide direct heating with minimal warm up time
The Church
St Thomas is your quintessential rural church. It is grade two listed and has all the features that make a conventional space heating system impractical – poor insulation, high ceiling and intermittent usage. As the church is used once a week on a Sunday, St Thomas required a direct heating system that was easy to control and would provide heat to a congregation with minimal warm up time.
The church group looked at several manufacturers and different heating technologies before settling on our under pew heaters. When partnered with a green energy provider, electric under pew heaters can assist a church on their path to net zero carbon.
The Heaters and Spec
Under pew heaters are unobtrusive low level convector heaters that sit under pews and convect warm air upwards towards a pew occupant. These heaters are hand assembled in the UK and made of tough durable steel (so they can withstand accidental knocks). When specifying pew heaters, the idea is to cover as much of the pew width as possible and slot heaters in between pew supports. As the pews at St Thomas did not have back boards we specified hanging brackets for each heater.
The specification was as follows:
2 x PH30 300W pew heaters
47 PH45 450W pew heaters
50 x PHB suspension bracket
Suspension brackets are ideal for pews with no back boards
Pew heaters are power coated brown making them very unobtrusive
Control
Control is vital to ensure pew heaters are not left on when a church is unoccupied so Ed and his team came up with an excellent system. The pews in the nave of the church were divided into four zones each with their own independent run down timer.
This meant the zones could be energised for a set period of time then would automatically switch off. This way they keep running costs to an absolute minimum.
The Finished Project
The project was a huge success and the customer was very happy with the results. We would like to say a big thanks to Ed Green for getting us involved in this project for letting us take some photos of the installed project.
Pew heaters are made of tough steel so they can withstand accidental knocks