Bryan Barlow, director of Spirotech, is after you. If he hasn't seen you yet, he will be there soon with his trusty demonstration Spirovent model. Paul Braithwaite talks to an icon of the heating and ventilating industry.
BRYAN Barlow is Mr Spirovent in the UK heating and ventilating industry.

The two names are virtually synonymous.

Barlow is sales director of Spirotech UK, the UK arm of Spirotech BV, the Dutch company which makes and sells deaerators, dirt separators and air vents.

Barlow knows his market. He has seen it from both the contractor's and supplier's side of the fence.

He started his love affair with the Spirovent product in 1990 as an area sales manager in the North of the country.

He used the deaerator and dirt separator brand as an introduction to consultants and contractors and when he sold one he invariably sold other products as well.

He did quite well, he says modestly, as his area eventually became the biggest in the country for sales of the product.

'It is a case of applying yourself. I would take the demo model out and blitz all the consultants and specifiers in each area.'

Needless to say, he wants Spirovent to be number one.

Currently, he reckons there are four companies out there which are virtually neck and neck.

But none, he suggests, has the research and development facility of Spirovent and this is where the product scores.

Barlow says it has been a hard, but rewarding slog.

His tried and tested method has always been to visit consultants with a CPD seminar on the problems of air and dirt on water
systems.

In fact, he says he was showing consultants his seminar (which consisted of an overhead projector and acetates in those days) before CIBSE introduced the CPD points system. Then it is a case of revisiting and getting specified.

In the marketplace

Now, Barlow and Wilkinson, his colleague for the South, are out in the marketplace and doing the same for the contractors, making sure they are ordering the Spirovent products as specified by the consultants.

These days, Barlow is one of the main attractions at the HEVAR exhibitions and other trade shows. His glass demonstration model of the Spirovent attracts lots of attention from visitors as it goes through its cycle, showing how the unit gets rid of the air and dirt from heating and cooling systems.

The HEVAR shows and all the other events which Spirotech attends are about enquiries. And recently the company has introduced the Spirocross, which combines the Spirovent with a low-loss header.

Barlow says for local authority work, where there is a bank of boilers attached to a low-loss header and a Spirovent, the low-loss header is now incorporated into the Spirocross.

Barlow expects this product to take off as it effectively saves on the cost of a low-loss header.

He admits the Spirovent unit is top of the range. As such it is dearer than some of its competitor products but it works better than the competition, he insists.

Barlow says Spirovent is the best - but he would say that, wouldn't he? 'However, it is the only unit which deaerates using still water,' he insists.

A bubble in static water will rise to the top. When it is poured, most of the bubbles rise to the top but large ones stick to the bottom and others stick to the sides of the glass. These attract other bubbles and they form one bigger bubble and so on.

When bubbles rise to the top in the Spirovent unit, the air forces the water down and a float drops, opening a valve to allow the water to escape. As the air escapes, the water rises and the float lifts too, which stops the water entering the valve and escaping.

Even the release valve is specially polished so that any problems are minimised and offered with a three-year guarantee against leakage.
And there will be no compromise on quality.

If the bubbles stay in the water, they eventually cause problems for the system including early wear and tear, decreasing pump performance, insufficient heat delivery or cooling efficiency, failures in the installations and even a complete shut down.

Further, Barlow reckons most installations are 1m and 1.75m flow per second.

The basic Spirovent will be able to work with this flow. But some cheaper competitor products will have to have larger units to cope with the same flow, which brings their product nearer in price to the Spirovent or even higher.

Barlow adds that he always tries to check the flow rate in case the project needs a larger unit because of a greater flow rate. Mr Spirovent Barlow is truly a partner in the design.