Built to perform
Andrews Water Heaters, a leading UK name in commercial water heating systems, has supplied its Supa-Flo instantaneous commercial water heaters for the largest new-build hotel project in London for 30 years. Located in Westminster and opening in September 2003, this is the fourth new hotel to be built in as many years by the City Inn Group. This company specialises in developing large scale, stylish, contemporary hotels that are all brand new and purpose built in prime city centre locations and which combine a state of the art product with fantastic food and excellent service. Aimed at both business and leisure travellers, three hotels are already established successfully in Bristol, Glasgow and Birmingham.
With business clientele, domestic hot water demand tends to peak at certain times of day when large amounts of hot water are used for food preparation and washing up as well as simultaneous draw offs for high performance showers. In its central location, the new City Inn Westminster will also attract discerning tourists with its 460 en-suite bedrooms and 200 covers restaurant. Andrews Supa-Flo water heaters are well suited to these requirements being efficient generators of high volume continuous flow hot water and have therefore been installed in all four City Inn hotels. This brings benefits in terms of continuity of service and technical support while keeping maintenance arrangements simple and cost effective.
The City Inn Group required engineering consultants, Faber Maunsell, when designing the mechanical services, to give as much consideration to long term operating and maintenance costs as to capital cost of plant. The fundamental requirements for the hot water provision for this project where reliability, space efficiency, cost effectiveness and minimum cost-in-use and the Andrews Supa-Flo series meets all these requirements.
The high efficiency and rapid response of the Andrews Supa-Flo series is well suited to the peak volume hot water requirements of the hotel industry. These units have a low water content of only 6-31 litres and heat water only on demand, responding immediately to provide a continuous flow of hot water so there are no standing heat losses. High operating efficiency does not diminish under part load conditions due to the simultaneous modulation of gas and air to the burner. This achieves the optimum ratio in part load situations when the efficiency of these water heaters increases beyond the 85% efficiency achieved under full load. The fully electronic EM control option (standard on the R18 series) also ensures temperature accuracy of +/- 1ºC.
The Project Manager for contractors, Haden Young, explained that the quantity of hot water storage calorifiers needed to meet the level of demand in these applications, and their considerable weight, would have required costly additional structural support. With space at a premium in London, the cost of a plant room within the building would have been prohibitive. The Andrews units are perfect for rooftop installation being compact, lightweight and just three Supa-Flo R18 154EM water heaters can each deliver up to 180 litres/min through a 44ºC temperature rise. System economy is further maximised by the Andrews BT500 Buffer Vessels linked to each water heater that provide just 500 litres of stored hot water for small draw offs, thereby conserving boiler energy.
