Infrared Heating for The Salvation Army Hawick Corps

A flexible infrared heating solution for a large church and community building

Herschel has completed a new infrared heating installation for The Salvation Army’s Hawick Corps in Scotland, providing a flexible and individually controlled heating solution across its worship hall and adjoining community spaces.

Like many churches and places of worship, the building presented a particular heating challenge. A large, high-ceilinged main hall needed to be heated alongside a collection of much smaller offices, corridors, kitchen facilities and ancillary rooms. All spaces have very different heat requirements and patterns of use.

Rather than treating the building as a single heating zone, Herschel designed a solution around how each individual area is actually used.

The challenge

Traditional heating systems can struggle to heat large church or community buildings.

High ceilings and significant room volumes can make it inefficient to heat all of the air within a worship space, particularly when the building is occupied intermittently. At the same time, smaller meeting rooms and offices may need heating at completely different times.

At The Salvation Army Hawick Corps, the requirement was not simply to provide sufficient heating capacity. The infrared heating system needed to:

• Deliver comfortable warmth within the large worship hall;
• Provide appropriate heating for much smaller adjoining rooms;
• Allow different areas of the building to operate independently;
• Respond to varying patterns of occupancy;
• Remain sympathetic to the appearance and use of the building;
• Give the Corps simple control over when and where heating is used.

Targeted radiant heating for the main worship hall

Suspended Herschel Power 6 infrared heaters were specified for the high-ceilinged main worship space. Rather than relying solely on warming a large volume of air, infrared heating delivers radiant energy directly towards people, surfaces and the occupied area below. This makes infrared particularly well suited to large volume and intermittently occupied buildings such as churches, halls and community buildings, where attempting to heat the entire air volume can be impractical.

The suspended heaters were carefully positioned to provide balanced radiant coverage across the main hall while integrating discreetly with the building.

Infrared panels for offices and smaller spaces

The surrounding rooms required a different heating approach. Herschel infrared panels (Comfort and Krystal panels) were installed across the smaller offices, kitchens, corridors and ancillary spaces, using a combination of wall and ceiling-mounted panels depending on the requirements of each room. Their slim profile allows them to provide comfortable radiant heating without taking up valuable floor space.

By specifying the most appropriate infrared heater for each individual space, the installation could operate as one coordinated heating system while still responding to very different room requirements.

Individually zoned heating controls

An important part of the project was the ability to control different areas independently. Individually zoned controls allow the teams to programme each area according to when it is actually required.

The main worship hall, offices and other rooms do not all have to be heated at the same time. Instead, individual zones can be scheduled and controlled separately, helping avoid heating unused parts of the property unnecessarily. For churches and community buildings with changing occupancy throughout the week, this degree of flexibility is particularly valuable.

From survey and system design through to installation

The Salvation Army Hawick project was approached as a complete heating solution rather than simply a heater installation. Beginning with an assessment of the building and how the different spaces were used, Herschel developed a system combining different infrared heater formats, positioning and controls.

The installation was then completed by Herschel Installation Services (North), tested and handed over as a fully functioning zoned heating system. The objective throughout was to deliver effective heating while remaining sympathetic to the character and practical requirements of the building.

The Salvation Army Facilities Team commented:

“Many thanks for all your help with the project which has been welcomed by the Corps members”

Thank you to The Salvation Army Hawick Corps for their co-operation in this project which is a another great example of how infrared heating can provide a practical, flexible solution for challenging-to-heat buildings.