Located in Mt Lawley, Perth College is the oldest independent girls’ school in Western Australia. The college features a 50m, eight-lane heated swimming pool, which is used by the school, and by Perth City Swimming Club for swim teaching, coaching, learn to swim sessions, and squad training. It’s also home to the Perth Swim Academy, a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for education, instruction and development within the sport of swimming.
Driven by the desire to reduce gas bills for pool water heating, the school made the decision to install an evacuated tube (EVT) solar pool heating system. Such a system can produce twice the heat per unit area as a traditional flat plate panel system and, because of its high efficiency, it can keep a pool well heated in the cooler months.
Supreme Heating WA, which specialises in energy efficient heating solutions for homes and pools, installed a 72-panel EVT system over four to five weeks. As the system is designed to produce very high temperature water, the company needed a copper joining solution which could handle the temperatures.
Ability to handle high temperatures
Craig Doncon, Principal of Supreme Heating WA, said, “We needed a solution that could be guaranteed.
“We looked at both the Viega Propress system and a competing system, and were given assurance by Viega that their fittings won’t fail up to 200° Celsius. With the other system, we were frustrated that it wouldn’t handle high temperatures beyond 25mm.”
Robert Hardgrove, National Technical Manager/Strategic Projects – Viega Australia, said, “The Viega Propress system is capable of handling peak temperatures of 200° Celsius for the duration of the stagnation events.”
For the Perth College project, Supreme Heating used a range of fittings from DN20 to DN65mm.
“Viega had a wide range of sizes to support the EVT system design,” Mr Doncon said.
Mr Doncon said another factor for choosing the Viega fittings was the simplicity of use.
“The tooling is easy to use, lightweight and functional for repetitious work. Speed of work was also important. For example, using the Propress system saved me around two weeks of work – and that included pressure testing.”
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