Berwick Retirement Communities

Energy Efficiency Coupled with Fiscal Responsibility Berwick Retirement Communities and Honeywell identified improvements at two facilities with a keen eye on using energy savings to leverage energy grants from the local utility companies in British Columbia.

“Honeywell’s Energy and Facility Renewal Report took a holistic look at our facility’s mechanical systems and utility consumption. The solutions they recommended made economic sense. For one particular retrofit, the applicable grants Honeywell sourced and applied made our decision to proceed even more compelling.”

- Amir Hemani, Chief Operating Officer, Berwick Retirement Communities

The Customer

Based in four cities in British Columbia, Berwick Retirement Communities offers independent living, assisted living and licensed residential care services.

The Problem

• Two of Berwick’s facilities have mechanical equipment operating beyond its expected useful life.
• Berwick House had failing gas-fired domestic hot water tanks which threatened to interrupt service to the residents.
• Berwick on the Lake also had heat recovery units that were outdated, at end of service life and causing repeated maintenance issues for the resident Maintenance Manager.

The Solution

• For Berwick House in Victoria, BC, Honeywell rapidly sourced new condensing boilers to meet Berwick’s need to replace older, less efficient domestic hot water boiler technology. It also performed the retrofit prior to the total failure of the old technology, ensuring no interruption of service to the residents. Honeywell also replaced two aging air conditioning units and installed two new heat pump units to replace existing electric duct heaters, largely financed through substantial grants from BC Hydro’s Power Smart program. This grant significantly lessened the payback for this project to 3.4 years*.
• At Berwick on the Lake, Nanaimo, a solution was developed to retrofit their existing heat recovery systems that were aging and underperforming.

*The payback accounted for project costs compared to required capital upgrades, grants, and anticipated energy savings.

Key Technologies

• High efficiency heat pumps used to retrofit heat recovery systems, optimizing energy consumption and improving system reliability.
• Energy efficient gas-fired condensing boilers replaced less efficient, conventional gas-fired domestic hot water tanks, resulting in fewer emissions and reduced natural gas consumption while maintaining resident comfort conditions.
• New, high efficiency heat pumps replaced outdated air conditioning units and electric duct heaters ensuring substantial reductions to electrical consumption while improving upon comfort conditions for the residents.

The Results

• As a result of the work on the two facilities, Berwick Retirement Communities reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
• Berwick Retirement Communities is a more environmentally conscious place to live, work and visit.