Basílica de Santa Mª Magdalena

Customer details

Trading name: Basílica de Santa Mª Magdalena.
Location: Cangas del Narcea, Asturias.
Activity: Place of Worship.

Background

As is well known, churches are large spaces that generally remain cold, particularly during the winter. The Santa Mª Magdalena Basilica did not have an adequate heating system to keep the church at an appropriate temperature and for the faithful to worship in comfort.

Natural gas radiant panels are the best alternative to achieve the desired temperature in such large spaces, where there is a huge open-plan area and high ceilings. It is a solution that offers high levels of comfort and provides a pleasant calm setting.

In this specific case, the basilica had an old installation that needed to be switched on several hours in advance to even just take the chill off the place, as to raise the ambient temperature by just one degree required the boiler to be running for several hours.

Existing facility

The basilica’s old facility consisted of a diesel boiler with a fan coil system, which used convection to heat an open-plan space in a rather inefficient way.

After conducting an installation study, a radiant panel solution was designed. Thanks to this solution, the heat is given off by radiation, focusing on the areas to be heated, in this case, the pews of the worshippers and other specific areas.

Thanks to the radiant panels, the desired comfort was achieved, with the added bonus of economic and energy savings. Thus, and as the basilica’s priest explained: “it is warmed up quickly, cleanly and quietly.”

Solution provided

Technically, radiation consists of an electro-magnetic wave (infrared rays) that are transformed into heat when they come into contact with any solid object or body. They do not heat the air, but rather the surfaces of objects and people.

This operating principle achieves optimum conditions of comfort and results in significant savings in consumption.
Thus, 5 panels heat the central nave and one the sacristy, using a total nominal power of 167,958 kcal/h, 33% down on the previous 250,000 kcal/h.
The sacristy is 7 m and the church 12 m high. Radiant panels are the only solution for such great heights.

Results

Thanks to the advantages of natural gas, Santa Mª Magdalena Basilica achieved the following savings compared to using diesel:

52% savings in CO2 emissions, (43 tons fewer) along with 100% savings in solidate particulates and sulphurs.
32% economic savings in fuel.

52% savings in emissions

32% economic savings

Contact

Nortegas will help you carry out your installation as efficiently as possible. If you already have a natural gas installation, we will help you to adapt your facilities to the new processes, with the help of our authorised installers and our team with extensive experience in gas-based solutions.

If, on the other hand, you do not have any type of installation, we will provide a personalised study and adapted to your needs. If you are considering a change of system or a new installation, we have a team of experts to advise you.