Keeping children cosy at Jack in the Box Nursery

A day nursery in Hempnall, South Norfolk, is ensuring consistently warm rooms for its children at reduced energy bills, thanks to an air source heat pump installed by Finn Geotherm.

Jack in the Box Nursery was set up by director, Annabelle Conway, in 2014. She originally ran the nursery from her home but with a growing number of children wishing to join, Annabelle began looking for new premises. Jack in the Box moved to a purpose-built nursery in Hempnall in April 2015. The nursery now looks after 157 children, aged from three months to 12 years, in day sessions and before and after school clubs.

The new premises were built by Steel Build Masters who recommended Finn Geotherm for the air source heat pump installation. A requisite of the planning permission was highly efficient heating and, in a rural location, air source was the ideal choice.

Annabelle Conway, director at Jack in the Box, said: “I wanted underfloor heating as an easy and efficient way of heating the nursery throughout. We spend a lot of time playing on the floor and it’s important to keep the children warm and comfortable all day.”

Finn Geotherm specified and installed a Dimplex A16 air source heat pump with 250 litre Dimplex’s EC-Eau Smart cylinder to provide all the building’s heating and hot water.

Annabelle Conway, director at Jack in the Box, said:

“I am very pleased with my air source system. As a nursery, we need to maintain temperatures in the play and sleep rooms all year round. The cost and energy savings we’re seeing from the system are very good. The benefit of receiving the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is an added bonus, which makes air source a very attractive option for a building such as ours. Customer service at Finn Geotherm has been very good – the engineers in particular, were very responsive to any queries we had.”

The installation at Jack in the Box is benefitting from the non-domestic RHI scheme, a government financial incentive which rewards people and businesses for opting for renewable energy. The non-domestic scheme is Consumer Price Index (CPI) linked and provides quarterly payments for 20 years, based on the amount of clean, green renewable heat the system produces.