Hotel refurbishment avoids need to detect refrigerant leaks
The installation of new air conditioning in the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Gerrards Cross is demonstrating how the clever use of design and specification can remove the need for leak-detection equipment in occupied spaces. This hotel has 147 bedrooms and a conference centre. It has undergone a complete refurbishment since being bought by the Cairn Hotel Group.
Under EN 378 legislation, which is particularly applicable to hotels, leak-detection equipment must be provided if all the R410A refrigeration could leak into a single room and exceed a concentration of 0.44 kg/m3.
Mitch Swirles, managing director of Turn Key Air Conditioning, which installed the system, explains, ‘When we were asked to help with this project, we saw it as an ideal opportunity to design out the need for leak detection. We are now looking at how we can implement this in other situations with the Cairn Group.’
Air conditioning for the bedrooms is based on Mitsubishi Electric’s City Multi heat-recovery system. In association with Mitsubishi Electric value-added reseller PACAIR, Turn Key designed the system with the minimum amount of refrigerant in each bedroom.
PACAIR used its specialist knowledge of to advise on the installation of a Melcotel hotel control system that link each room to the Ving cards so that systems will not operate when a room is not occupied.
In addition to ducted fan-coil units in the rooms, City Multi ceiling cassettes are installed in all public areas. Lossnay ventilation units with heat recovery supply fresh air and extract stale air.
