Listed Building Saves on Energy Bills Thanks to AMROC Group

Sketty Hall, one of Swansea’s most famous historical properties, is a beautiful Grade II listed manor house that now forms part of the Gower College estate.

Now used as a modern teaching and learning space, the building has been developed over the centuries with some of the older parts dating back to the early 18th Century.

Needless to say, creating an efficient energy system in such a large, old building is a challenge, to say the least, but that’s exactly what the team at AMROC have done.

“Sketty Hall is a beautiful building,” said Managing Director of AMROC Jason Quinn, “and, like lots of listed buildings such as this, the plant, pipework, radiators and more can be tricky to work with.”

However, having steadily upgraded various aspects of the heating and hot water systems as part of a larger project of works with the College, the AMROC team have brought the historic landmark into the 21st Century – and saved the College money too.

“The biggest upgrade was the installation of a Building Management System, or BMS,” said Jason, “which we retrofitted to certain aspects of the existing system giving the Facilities Management team full control of the Heating, Air Conditioning, Lighting and more and reducing their bills by a massive 30% year on year.”

In addition to bringing the bills down, the AMROC team also provide maintenance and repair services to the College, so when Sketty Hall lost all hot water, AMROC were sent to the rescue.

“We had a call from the Hall to say they had no hot water, so we dispatched one of our engineers to investigate,” said Richard Carlson, “and after a quick fault-finding exercise, we pinpointed the issue – a corroded hot water pipe.”

The team quickly developed a temporary fix that reinstated the hot water, giving the staff and hundreds of students who use the facility on a daily basis the heat and hot water they needed, before setting to work on a permanent solution to the problem.

“Some of the pipes in buildings of this age are extremely old, however being a listed building, knocking down walls and ceilings to rip out the old pipes and install new ones is not always an option, so we need to be a bit more surgical in our approach to avoid damaging the building yet still provide a solution.”

The team were able to successfully replace the degraded pipe with little to no interruption to the day-to-day teaching at the venue and with zero damage to the structural integrity of the old Manor House.