ON THE ROAD When one becomes three
The Oxford Townhouse was opened in February 2016 with just 15 rooms, and was designed specifically for those who look for a full hotel level of facilities, such as air conditioning. However, the installation had a couple of interesting challenges, and Lynn Sencicle went along to have a look.
S
ituated on the Abingdon Road south of Oxford, The Oxford Townhouse is a small hotel made up of two of a number of late Victorian terraced houses. As one of its unique selling points it boasts air conditioning, but design and installation was not the most straightforward of jobs.
Sales engineer David Sutherland and lead engineer Simon Dickins of McAlpine Grant Ilco Ltd were the principle contractors for the air conditioning element. “The main idea was to put one large VRV system in to the whole building, covering all of the bedrooms,” said Mr Sutherland. “We had the go-ahead to do it, and we were going to put a full blown Daikin VRV system in.”
Unfortunately it transpired that the electricity company would have to charge around £80,000 to upgrade the three phase supply into the building.
“That kind of added cost of course changed everything,” says Mr Sutherland. “There was already three phase here, but it wasn’t man enough to accommodate everything the owners wanted to incorporate into the hotel.” However, with fortuitous timing, Daikin launched the VRV Compact – standing at just 823mm high – on to the market. “That was ideal,” said Mr Sutherland. “The availability of the Compact VRV meant that we could revise the design to include three small systems instead. The Compacts are all single phase, which means that the electricity company have revamped the existing three phase, but haven’t had to enlarge the cables, hence saving the hotel that potential cost.”
Other advantages to going down this route became apparent. One of the main restrictions in the area is parking, and the hotel is understandably protective of the car park that it has. “The size of the condensing unit was going to be quite difficult to place out of the way and out of sight with the original plan,” explained Mr Sutherland. “Almost certainly we would have had to use parking spaces. With these three smaller units, we’ve been able to tuck them away in a corner of the car park instead. They are much less obvious and don’t take up any of the parking spaces.”
The Oxford Townhouse went about costing the exercise per room by having a test room fully fit out, rather than having a budget to work to. The compacts are very quiet, and along with its space efficient size, is suited to small hotels. There are other added benefits and installation cost savings. “With the original full pack system, under BREEAM regulations, we would have had to have refrigerant leak detection in every room.
Simon Dickins (left) and David Sutherland (right).
But because the amount of refrigerant gas in each system is below that threshold, we haven’t needed to do that.”
A centralised control unit takes care of the three systems and enables control and monitoring of each individual room. The controls manage just the air conditioning currently, but the hotel is planning to integrate it to control the heating system in the future.
The biggest challenges in terms of physical installation according to lead engineer Simon Dickins, were the pipe runs. “The hotel was extended back at some point, and it’s staggered the floor levels,” he explained. “Trying to get the through the floors to put the pipework in was complicated. It was also two individual houses that have been knocked through into one. “Some of the pipework had to go all the way up to the loft and drop back down, while others went outside and around that way.” Last but by no means least, looking forward, what sort of life span should this system have? “At least 15 years,” said Mr Sutherland. “In fact you should get a good 25 years out of them. Apart from any impact that changes in refrigerant legislation has, of course!”
www.acr-news.com August 2016 27
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