Building Management Systems (BMS or EMS) are electronic controllers that can be configured to provide bespoke control solutions for heating, ventilating, air conditioning, lighting etc.

Your heating/lighting operation can then be viewed and/or adjusted via a user friendly wall mounted colour touch screen, or animated screens can be published to a local website (accessed by only you or published to the world wide web depending on your own PC computer system).

Standard functions of these BMS Controls include real time temperature and plant monitoring, graphical histories, setpoint and time schedule adjustment, optimisation, ECO masters, extension and setback control.

What is Optimisation?  The system "learns" how quickly a building warms up or cools down, then enables the heating plant accordingly. Basically, if it is very cold outside at 02:00 the BMS may switch your heating on at 04:13 to allow your setpoint to be reached by the time you have set (say 07:00). On warmer nights, the heating may not start until 06:32, but still reach setpoint by 08:00.

It will learn how well your house retains heat and shuts down early if it calculates that your setpoint will still be maintained at your OFF time (say 22:00).

This is how most of the energy savings will be made in your home, because most people don't change their heating timeclock regularly to suit the current outside conditions. This is why your house will generally still be hot when you have gone to bed, but will still be chilly when your feet leave the blanket in the morning. A nice by-product of using this system domestically, is that you never get a "cold run to the bathroom" when you get up on chilly mornings, because the system would have automatically started earlier. You pay no more for this because on warmer mornings the heating starts later.

Is it new and unproven? This is not new technology, Building Management Systems run the heating and ventilating in most public and private sector commercial buildings and have done for the past 40 years. That means your office block, your child's primary school, your supermarket, the airport you leave to go on holiday and the hotel you stay in when you get there, will all have a BMS efficiently running their heating and ventilating plant.

Over that period of time, few of these systems have been installed for environmental reasons, but simply because fuel bills dramatically increase if they don't (and simply use timeclocks and thermostats instead).

It is worth noting that we have had both Solar Heating and Wind Turbines for at least 40 years also, but neither have been a British commercial building standard. The prevalence of these two technologies in new build domestic homes over proper energy management is due to what the Royal Academy Of Engineering calls "ECO Bling" (Doug King's Report January 2010).

"Eco-bling describes unnecessary renewable energy visibly attached to the outside of poorly-designed buildings – it's a zero-sum approach." "If you build something that is just as energy-hungry as every other building and then put a few wind turbines and solar cells on the outside that addresses a few per cent of that building's energy consumption, you've not achieved anything."

Renewable energy sources such PV Arrays (Solar), Wind Turbines and Ground Sourced Heat Pumps, have an increasingly important role to play and certainly save energy. The Royal Academy is intimating in that report, that these renewable systems are the third stage of effective energy management after Insulation, and Controls, not the first. Particularly as the control system is likely to be 3 x the price of insulating and renewable sources can easily be 3 x the cost of a decent BMS control installation (the average cost of installing a PV array Sharp Solar (BSEE May 2011) is £15000).

What are ECO Masters? The system automatically shuts down the heating plant when the outside air passes a master setpoint usually 16 or 17C.

A "Season" button on the screen will also allow you to set the system to "Summer" which will shut down the heating regardless of internal or external temperature, and just leave your Hot Water on.

A "Holiday" button will setback your heating to 12C, run your pump for frost protection (when the outside air drops below 1C while you are away sking). Holidays can also be set via the time clock so that the heating is back on the day you get home automatically.

3 & 6 hour "Setback" buttons on the screen (ideally mounted by the front door) mean that if the heating has to be run throughout the day at weekends or if the house is occupied during the week, the buttons can be easily pushed if you leave the house.

Is it easy to use?  Very

How much will it save me?  No way to tell, as there are too many factors to apply.

How is the house used and heated now?

How much did you spend on fuel last year, and were the outside air temperatures comparable?

How will you use the new system, and what will you set it to?

A Building Management System, will give you all of the automatic energy saving features noted above, but it will be predominately how YOU set the system, that will make a difference. If you are extravagant with your time schedules and have a high setpoint, the house will not be efficient, but you will have smaller bills than you would if you ran to that setpoint with a simple clock and stat.

How much will it cost?  These systems are bespoke to your home, and requirements, so will vary accordingly. We are based in Colchester and so the further away you are, the more it will cost.

For an example, if your house was in Essex and you wanted a basic BMS with 1 x space sensor and 1 x outside sensor to run your heating, we would charge approx. £3200 + VAT.

To include 3 x space sensors, flow sensor, colour touch screen and published web site we would charge approx. £5000 + VAT.

But these prices are just a guide and could be more or less depending on what you want it to do and how easy it is to install.

What warranty and support will I get?  We offer 1 years warranty and after that you can continue to have your system serviced by us or any of Cylon's many registered systems houses. Cylon's head office is located in Dublin and were established in 1985. They are one of the largest independent suppliers of Building Controls in the world, supplying globally.

www.Cylon.com