Who needs the Renewable Heat Incentive when there’s Space Air Solutions

Lee Housing Association is a community-based organisation that aims to provide good quality accommodation. Swan House was originally built for students, split into four blocks, each block contains four 5-shares and eight 2-shares, all are served by the original under-floor heating system since 1979, serviced by electric wires within the floor construction. The original under-floor heating installed had no controls to vary temperature; it was either on or off.

Lee Housing was looking for an efficient heating system, where all components could be stored outside of the apartments, due to space constraints. Climate Facilities, a Space Air / Daikin approved dealer, offered and installed the complete Space Air Daikin Altherma HT System. Space Air for over 30 years has designed and manufactured accessory components to compliment the Daikin product range, one of which is the weather-proofed enclosures. These were made for the indoor unit (containing a secondary DX cycle and heat exchanger to reach those higher temperatures efficiently) so it could be positioned outside the building along with the outdoor unit, as per the tender request. Every Space Air supplied system comes with pre-fabricated piping kits to optimise the energy efficiency of the system and wattmeter’s to monitor the energy usage of the Space Air Daikin Altherma air/water heat pump, the kits and meters are also covered in weather and vandal proofed enclosures.

Each block now consists of 2 x 16kW heat pump units a total of 128kW with a nominal COP of 3.08 (the original system had a nominal COP of 0.8 when installed). The out of date under-floor heating system has been replaced with radiators provided with TRV’s (thermostatic radiator valves) for residents to control the internal temperature. Independent reports suggest that by replacing the old under-floor electric system with the Space Air Daikin Altherma HT high temperature heat pump provides a 68% reduction in heating fuel use and cost and a payback period of 15 years. Based upon 8p/kWh this equates to an annual saving of £18,986 in year 1.

The Daikin Altherma HT system is MCS certified and holds the European Eco-label accreditation.

For further information on this project contact Space Air Solutions (SAS) on Tel: 01483 252 252 or email altherma@spaceair.co.uk quoting Swan House.