"Now that fewer new building projects are being launched, it makes perfect sense for installers to shift their focus to replacing old pumps,” says sales engineer Morten Vinther, Grundfos DK. If properly cultivated, this vast business area offers great potential, promising benefits in environmental as well as financial terms.

At the Thisted branch of the nationwide installer enterprise J.Hundahl VVS, staff have successfully focused on what they term ‘energy-reducing measures’. "At this particular time, when many project types are grinding to a halt, we try to focus on new areas, and the replacement market is huge." says project manager Niels Rosenvinge Lundbye, J.Hundahl VVS.

Replacing 52 pumps

Reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions are issues that feature high on the agendas of Danish enterprises, housing co-operatives, office complexes, schools, etc. This also held true for the management at EUC in Thisted.

The pumps used at the schools were between 15 and 25 years old. The calculations made by Grundfos showed that a complete replacement would yield savings of 75,000 kWh each year. This meant that investing in new pumps would pay for itself in just under 3 years and, even more importantly, reduce CO2 emissions by 40 tonnes a year.

These figures prompted the management of EUC Thisted to replace all 52 circulator pumps with A-rated pumps from Grundfos. "At J.Hundahl VVS we benefit greatly from taking Grundfos' energy calculations with us on customer visits. It lends a certain weight to our words when we can present calculations from Grundfos. In this project the calculations proved accurate, just as we expected, and the savings have already proven themselves in practice. And as electricity prices have gone up by 20% since we installed the new pumps, the replacement has proven to be an even better deal than projected," says Niels Rosenvinge Lundbye.