Industrial

Heating a large volume

A warehouse is not a big office. The volume is enormous, the occupancy is sparse and mobile, the doors open regularly, and heating the air at ceiling level does nothing useful for a person standing on the floor.

The strategies that actually work:

Destratification deserves a specific mention. In a high-bay building, the temperature difference between floor level and ceiling can be substantial, and all that warm air at the roof is heat you paid for that nobody benefits from. Fans that return it to floor level are inexpensive relative to the heating plant and frequently pay back quickly. It is one of the few genuinely easy wins in industrial heating.

Process water and drainage

Industrial premises use water in ways that offices do not, and that changes the plumbing requirements substantially.

• Process hot water at volumes and temperatures set by the process rather than by comfort, frequently with a demand profile that is nothing like domestic.
• Backflow protection at high fluid categories. Process connections, chemical dosing, wash-down points and hose unions all sit well above domestic risk categories, and each requires protection appropriate to the highest risk on that branch. This is a common non-compliance in industrial buildings.
• Trade effluent. Discharging anything other than domestic-strength wastewater to the sewer requires consent from the water company, with conditions on volume and content. This is a regulatory matter, not a plumbing one, but it determines what drainage is permissible.
• Interceptors and separators where oils, fuels or solids could reach the drainage system – and these need maintaining, not just installing.
• Wash-down areas with appropriate drainage falls and grating, and the backflow protection that comes with hose points.
• Compressed air, and the water it produces. Condensate from compressed air systems is oily and should not simply go to drain.

Plant rooms and resilience

Industrial plant rooms have the same characteristics as commercial ones – cascaded boilers, hydraulic separation, pressurisation, pumps and controls – see commercial heating and plant rooms. What differs is the consequence of failure and the maintenance window.

Where heating or process water supports production, failure is measured in lost output rather than in discomfort. That justifies redundancy that would be excessive in an office: N+1 boilers, duty and standby pumps with automatic changeover and duty rotation, and monitoring that alarms to somebody rather than to an empty plant room.

Maintenance windows are set by production, not by trading hours – which sometimes means a shutdown period, sometimes a night shift, and sometimes a rolling programme where one item at a time is taken out while the rest carries on. Establishing what the actual window is, early, determines everything about how work gets programmed.

The practical realities

• Working at height. High-bay buildings mean access equipment, and that means planning rather than a ladder.
• Hot works permits, which most industrial sites operate and which affect how and when brazing and cutting can happen.
• Permit-to-work systems, isolation procedures and lock-off. A contractor who does not work to them will not be allowed back.
• Site inductions, which take time and should be allowed for in the programme.
• Coordination with production, because plant does not stop because a contractor has arrived.
• Three-phase supplies for larger plant and pumps.
• Dust, fumes and process conditions that affect what equipment can be installed where – a heating unit drawing air from a dusty process area needs thinking about.

Compliance for industrial premises

The same framework as any commercial building, with a few that bite harder here:

1. Water hygiene, including any wash-down, misting or spray systems, which are aerosol generators and therefore a specific concern.
2. Gas safety for heating plant and any process gas use, with commercial competence required.
3. F-Gas for any refrigeration or process cooling – industrial refrigeration charges can be substantial.
4. Pressure systems, where compressed air receivers and certain hot water systems fall under the pressure systems regulations with a written scheme of examination.
5. Trade effluent consent, where anything beyond domestic-strength discharge reaches the sewer.
6. Oil storage, where bulk fuel is held, subject to the oil storage regulations.

Pressure systems is the one most often unfamiliar. Compressed air receivers and certain other pressure equipment require a written scheme of examination drawn up by a competent person, and examination in accordance with it. If you have a compressor with a receiver, it is worth confirming that this exists.