Our client’s brief was to undertake the renovations of an old church. The brief required an unconventional method of warming the church building which sought to reduce energy consumption and visual impact of existing heat appliances whilst maintaining a comfortable temperature at all times.

Typically, churches are heated by a series of radiators at the end of each pew, blowing warm air onto the congregation. These radiators need to be activated several hours before service and are an expensive way of heating the air in the building; which both leaves the masonry walls and wooden furniture cold to the touch and also creates a downdraught in the building due to the presence of convection currents, further lowing the ambient air temperature.

The theory behind our client’s approach to finding a solution was based upon academic research of thermal comfort, resulting in a unique concept in which copper pipework was embedded into the stone walls of the church, heating them, and thus radiantly heating the building.

In order to achieve this innovation our client had to go through a development phase; undertaking complex calculations and modelling as well as an exploration of historical heating concepts and how they could be brought into the modern world to help improve upon current methods of heating buildings.

Wilby Jones were able to help the company identify the relevant time frames for which R&D could be attributed to and also helped to talk them through each step of the process in order to keep them informed of our work at all times. This led to a successful claim based on the new and innovative solutions our client developed.

Ben Thompson