Beechdale Community Housing Association

For a manufacturer at the forefront of condensing boilers, Worcester Bosch believes the development of partnerships with Housing Associations is one of the best ways of improving the SAP energy rating of the UK’s housing stock.

The revision of the building regulations, which may raise the SEDBUK ratings for new and replacement boilers to A and B, possibly due to come into force in 2005, coupled with the industry’s endemic installation problems, suggests that partnerships based on the provision of products alone will not suffice. Rather than offer a one-size-fits-all plan, Worcester Bosch is committed to developing bespoke relationships which suit the precise needs of social housing.

Beechdale in Walsall was the country’s first tenant controlled registered Housing Association. Today, of its 15 board members, 8, including the chair, are tenants. Many Beechdale people are elderly and were part of the estate when it formed in the 1950’s, and since then many have had families who are still living on the estate. Meeting this close knit community’s heating and hot water needs has been the focal point of a relationship that has been developing with Worcester Bosch since November 2002.

The partnership is based on the installation of 100 per cent Worcester Greenstar condensing boilers, both combination and system boilers, depending on house size, in all of Beechdales properties presently without the benefit of central heating. Over 200 units will be installed this year, with the rest being installed by 2007. Ken Siddle is part of the management team at Beechdale. He says the choice of product was not difficult. “We had used Worcester Bosch before for combis and been impressed,’ he says. ‘At that time we used another supplier for system boilers and not been impressed. So this time we specified Worcester Bosch for both. Ultimately it was WB’s after sales service, training and maintenance which swung it for us, especially its offer of a three year guarantee covering call outs and parts.”

Once Beechdale had made its choice, an independent consultant was brought in to help develop the partnership during the first half of 2003. Matt McGann, technical specification manager at Worcester Bosch explains, “When you live and breathe a subject everyday, you can get far too close to it. Therefore having an independent consultant with a specialism in building partnerships, but not part of the heating trade, was really important in helping the different parties in establishing a successful working relationship.”

Taking time to develop the partnership has allowed Worcester Bosch to give Beechdale much more than it would be able to give in a simple supplier arrangement. Not only has it been able to advise on the exact specification suited to the different housing types, but also how Beechdale could raise the number of Standard Assessment Programme (SAP) points that could be claimed for each property. Worcester Bosch was able to show the added benefits of opting for SEDBUK A condensing boilers, even though they are more expensive. If Beechdale had opted to fit SEDBUK D band boilers, they would have had to super insulate the houses, at an additional cost, to bring the houses up to the same SAP rating. What was also not initially clear is that Beechdale would be entitled to an additional 3 SAP points per home, by fitting optimising controls to each boiler, which are more suited to the many elderly tenants. Optimising controls are not compatible with band D boilers.

Training forms an important part of every partnership. Matt McGann says it’s not expedient or cost effective to take a local authority’s direct labour team or sub-contractors off site to the Worcester Bosch Training Academy. He says, “Training can take up considerable time, and in the meantime boilers need to be installed and commissioned. Our mobile training unit includes working examples of our systems, allowing training to happen alongside the actual installation of boilers by sub contractors.” For Beechdale’s contractor CHN, training will take place on-site supported by the mobile training unit, and at CHN’s local Dudley centre, where it has its own Worcester Bosch training room.

Training focuses on some of the most important issues in wiring and firing the boiler; where to fit the condensate pipe; how to fit the optimised room temperature controller.

Training also focuses on the proper handover to the tenant to help Beechdale comply with point d of building regulation L1, which states ‘sufficient information should be made available so that occupiers can operate and maintain the services in such a manner as to use no more energy than is reasonable in the circumstances’. Worcester Bosch has found the best way to do this, is with a one page laminate with very simple to understand instructions. Beechdale’s tenant laminate was developed over six months, through five versions, by Worcester Bosch in partnership with the Housing Association staff and the contractor CHN.

But training is not just for the engineers. As part of its partnership with Beechdale, Worcester Bosch has also been training its Customer Services Officers and the housing management staff by actually taking them to the void properties and showing them the boiler and controls. Matt McGann explains,

“We hope that Beechdale’s decision to fit optimising room temperature controllers will significantly reduce the number of calls. But if calls are received, Beechdale’s staff will be better equipped to deal with the tenant’s problems.”

Attention to detail underlines Worcester Bosch’s commitment to its partners. Attempts to cut corners do not inspire confidence that the supplier is going to be there when they are needed most. Not only has Worcester Bosch offered Beechdale a three year guarantee, but have registered all of the properties on its database, so if an engineer is called out, they will immediately know the specification and history of the systems they will be looking at. If a Worcester Bosch service engineer is called out its highly likely they will fix the problem first time. This success is largely due to Worcester Bosch having it’s own in-house service engineers. This means engineers are able to specialise in carrying a full inventory of boiler spares, allowing them to focus their expertise on fault diagnosis, unlike industry service agents , who endeavour to carry as much as they can, but invariably work for more than just one manufacturer at a time.

To date the evaluator, British Gas, has passed over 99 per cent of the installations. Indeed, the contractor does not get paid until each installation is signed off. Since November 2002, Beechdale has not received a single complaint.

A manufacturer like Worcester Bosch, part of the Bosch Group – a charitable trust which invests funds into a range of social welfare projects across the globe, including public health and education – can provide condensing boilers that work with dry loft, open ventilation, or larger system boilers, in houses, maisonettes, or smaller one to two bed flats. This, coupled with its commitment to training, and obvious stability that a trust gives, provides the basis for partnerships with Housing Associations that help maximise both funding and expertise.

Greenstar HE condensing boilers

SEDBUK rated A condensing boiler’s like Worcester Bosch’s Greenstar HE range convert up to 97% of gas consumed into heat. It is this efficiency which results in savings of 15-20 per cent in heating and hot water bills when compared with a new conventional boiler, and, makes Greenstar boilers up to 30 per cent cheaper to run when compared with a 10-20 year old boiler.

Optimising room temperature controllers

Optimising room temperature controllers mean the tenant can control the temperature of their home without having to go to the boiler. Which for the elderly might mean having to go up and down the stairs to check a built in clock on the boiler. The control is simply plugged onto the boiler by the installer who sets the timing as required. Then, the tenants have a non digital room temperature controller with four settings with very simple icons set around a small click wheel; sun for daytime, moon for night, clock for timer, and frost for cold.