The project

The Royal Arsenal Energy Centre near the riverside at Woolwich in the London borough of Greenwich provides heating and power for over 700 flats and nearby buildings. Over the next 20 years, the domestic development is expected to spread substantially, eventually catering for 4,000 dwellings. Vital Energi is carrying out design and build works to provide a low-carbon solution, with the contract valued at nearly £5 million. The Royal Arsenal site, totalling 76 acres, is a long-term revitalisation project for what has been one of London’s most-deprived areas. It mixes refurbished listed buildings with bold new architecture.

Our design 

Vital Energi brought in A1 Flue Systems to manufacture, deliver and install boiler and CHP flues. The brief called for a self-supported multi-flue chimney with an external lighting system. The resultant project involved individual connections to four Bosch pressure jet boilers using a 550 mm diameter twin-wall product, each running through various elbows and a stainless steel silencer to a 90-degree base elbow and drain, rising vertically to termination within a windshield. A 425 mm diameter wall product was used for connecting to a Jenbacher CHP secondary silencer. The chimney windshield was constructed from 6 mm thick S275 carbon steel. A Y-spar fall arrest ladder rose up the central area of the windshield, with LED bulkhead fittings and emergency back-up.

Comments

“The central back-up team and our site operatives handle jobs large and small all over the country with the same expertise and vigour, no matter what the size. At the Royal Arsenal, we were the biggest subcontractor on this phase of the work. We fitted neatly into our client’s work programme throughout. While there were a few complex issues along the way, none deflected us from providing our usual practical solutions without disruption of any kind and to the full satisfaction of Vital Energi.” 

Harry Grout, Contract Manager

Facts at a glance

Client name: Vital Energi

Location: London

Project value: £390,000

Time to complete: 16 weeks