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Thistle Kensington Hotel

HVAC Installation and R22 replacement

The Thistle Hotel is located in Kensington Gardens, on Hyde Park. It’s a 3 Star, 10 storey hotel, complete with on site car parking, concierge, reception, bar and lounge, restaurant, conference facilities and 175 bedrooms over eight floors.

The project is being carried out for Guoman Thistle, who are the Thistle management company and the project is being managed by GMG Associates, with whom Four Seasons Group subsidiary, JCW have an excellent working relationship, via previous works undertaken for them.

The main phase of the works includes the refurbishment of the Air Conditioning systems in all of the bedrooms which involves a Daikin VRVIIIQ R22 replacement system. The existing equipment is being replaced by VRVQ units, which are suitable for R22 replacement systems. All pipe work is re-used in accordance with the Daikin VRV replacement technologies. This project is amongst the first 10 projects of this nature in the UK.

The ground and first floor works involve the replacement of the R22 systems, and a reduction in the number of external units by consolidating the systems into correctly designed and installed areas to enable better control. To the ground and first floors the works also include a new VRV System, Inverter DX Split System and a Twin Split System.

Along with the air conditioning upgrades the ventilation system has been renewed to the first floor utilising a new heat recovery AHU, to ensure the required fresh air is provided to the spaces and the design philosophy around heat recovery is maintained throughout. This was important to ensure this was achieved because of the feature windows being installed were not longer openable.

The contract is worth £650,000 to the Four Seasons Group and is part of the Hotel’s entire refurbishment.

Since the hotel is in 24 hour operation some works within the public interface areas had to be undertaken at night. Where this type of works was carried, close co-ordination, with main contractor and client was required.

The client had a specific budget in mind when they decided to undertake the refurbishment so the design process took three stages to get to the optimum in productivity and efficiency of the equipment, whilst adhering as closely as possible to the client’s specified budget.

Four Seasons suggested they could re-use some elements of their existing equipment, which, although poorly installed, had some salvageable parts worth recycling. For example, on the ground floor meeting room, the new ventilation system comprises 50% new ductwork and 50% existing ductwork. This was practicable because upon careful analysis Four Seasons ascertained that there could be no resulting problems with airflow restriction as the existing ductwork provided ample room for airflow feed to the meeting rooms, utilising some existing parts of the ductwork system and replacing only that which needed it.

Before embarking on the re-fit, Four Seasons were commissioned to provide a site survey of the existing condensers to establish the number of indoor and outdoor units, establish pipe work length and sizes, insulation thickness and joint angles. They found that the existing equipment was past its age of efficiency and performance. Providing these surveys meant that the client will have a 5 year warranty on its existing equipment as it has been analysed by the supplier.

The new condensers, fan coils and R22 replacement, undertaken by Four Seasons here means that Thistle Kensington Hotel will be more energy efficient and not contain any harmful gases, in keeping with current legislation and made affordable by listening to the client and creating a tailored service.