Introduction
Hurtwood recently refurbished the Satchwell BAS 2800 BMS at Ashdown House. Hence we re-gained control of the heating plant which was continuously running in ‘hand’ operation. We used our Satrofit Modbus data collection products. As a result, a significant BMS was upgraded to the latest generation of Trend BMS controllers for half the cost of the standard approach.
The site was a large Government office built in the 1960s. The heating had been controlled by 7 Satchwell 196 BAS 2800 outstations. 12 smaller Satchwell 132 BAS outstations controlled ventilation and the DHW. There was an obsolete BAS 2800 supervisor on a head end PC. Our main focus initially was to regain a simple time & temperature control of the boiler plant room This allowed us to cut down the unnecessary use of heating oil and create savings immediately.
Satrofit Speeds up the Refurbishment
We refurbished the seven 196 outstations with Hurtwood’s Satrofit Modbus IO system. We fitted these straight into the existing rack modules which saved many days’ worth of time on site installing complete replacement panels. The location of the panels in cramped riser cupboards also made any other solution difficult. For the 12 smaller 132 outstations, we built completely new panels containing the Staeffit IO system. We designed the IO system for Staefa AS1000 BMS upgrades and adapted it for the Satchwell 132’s and other systems. The system exactly mimicked of the layout of the input and output connections using specific connector modules. This meant we simply removed the connectors from the old controllers and pushed them straight into the replacement modules. The new panels provided us with far better protection of the equipment than the 132 controllers.
Following the replacement, we tested the input and output points using our Satrotool software. We developed this free software tool that allows a technician to recommission the input and output points on either the Satrofit or Staeffit cards. This also provides us the ability to read the Satchwell T Range sensors directly. The scaling profiles built into both of Hurtwood’s Modbus card systems gave a technician immediate results from reading the temperature sensors. Hence our technicians could check and calibrate the sensors even before connection to the main control system.
The New Trend – Niagara BMS
We installed four Trend TONN JACE Controllers within the existing 196 outstation enclosures. We chose this latest generation of Trend controllers running the powerful Niagara operating system. These we mounted on a specifically produced board. Hence we made use of the space saved in the 196 enclosures during their refurbishment with the Satrofit card system. Hurtwood used their specially written software tool to convert the old BAS 2800 software to the Niagara platform. This saved us a huge amount of engineering time. The Trend TONN JACE controllers running the Niagara environment provided us with a network accessible set of graphics for the BMS. We installed a WiFi network , allowing the graphics to be accessed by a smartphone anywhere in the office. This was important as the managing agent didn’t have their own IT network.