Pomme d'Or Hotel

Hotel’s golden opportunity to trim costs with auto cleaning ducts

As part of its ongoing investment programme, Seymour Hotels of Jersey decided to replace the ‘creaking’ air conditioning system serving the guest rooms in its flagship, the Pomme d’Or Hotel on St Helier’s Liberation Square. Not only had the system been in place for more than 20 years – the coastal climate had taken its toll on the metalwork of the condensing units on the roof and the system used the now-banned R22 refrigerant, which would have prevented any further maintenance or repairs to components in the refrigerant circuits.

Hotel’s golden opportunity to trim costs with auto cleaning ducts

The auto cleaning duct avoids accumulation of dust on the filter – which would otherwise impair efficiency of the unit and increase operating costs. In fact, the accessory is calculated to cut operating costs by 20%.

The attachment cleans the filter regularly and stores the dust in a dust box which can be emptied by housekeeping staff with a vacuum cleaner.

At the Pomme d'Or Hotel, filters used to be cleaned by hand every two or three months.

Each took about 30 minutes and the engineer had to remove a ceiling panel to access the filter each time, leading to decoration issues.

David Donoghue, group maintenance manager, Seymour Hotels

“With our air conditioning contractor we looked initially at replacement options from the same manufacturer.

We then found that other companies could offer comparable products and prices.

Ultimately we chose the Daikin solution for heating and cooling, because it included the auto cleaning duct on the indoor units.

Now, we get greater efficiency from the systems and we can deploy our maintenance team more efficiently.”

VRV-Q replacement for R22 systems

Steve le Bailly, director of Jersey-based Daikin D1 Partner Aston Services says: “Our biggest problem was removal of the old condensing units, which were so badly rusted that they would have been unsafe to lift out as individual units – so we cut them up on the roof and moved the parts in bags.

The new installation consists of 14 systems with 28 condensing units – all of which have Blygold treatment for added protection in the coastal environment.

The condensers are Daikin’s R410A-based VRV Q-series, specially developed for replacement of R22 systems.” The VRV Q-series saves on installation time and cost by reusing the R22 pipework.