The Old Vinyl Factory is a 150 acre site in Hayes, Hillingdon, where EMI manufactured records from the early 1950’s. The site is now being developed as a mixture of commercial, retail, education and residential premises and Vital Energi were appointed to deliver the complete energy solution for the project.
The iconic Old Vinyl Factory development was formerly EMI’s vinyl pressing plant and employed approximately 14,000 people. EMI moved its record production to a different site in the 1970’s and the 17-acre site was purchased for redevelopment in April 2011 by Purplexed.
Planning permission to redevelop the site for fully mixed use space was granted in 2013 and is being delivered by specialist regeneration and property developer U+I. Vital Energi were chosen to design and install the 4MW energy centre in The Powerhouse to provide 9 separate buildings on the development with heat and hot water.
The energy centre contains a 50,000 litre thermal store, a 459kW CHP engine, six 927kW boilers and a 69m chimney. Additionally, we have designed and are installing the site wide district heating network which, when complete, will equate to approximately 1000m of series 2 insulated district heating pipework. The energy centre and heating network will supply 547 residential units and 22,000m2 of mixed use commercial space with heat and hot water and generate CO2 savings of approximately 396 tonnes per year.
