The first R22 renewal systems to be installed in the UK have been successfully completed and are now providing high efficiency air conditioning at locations in the south of England.
The first VRF system to be replaced with R22 Renewal is cooling guests in a prestigious hotel and country club in St Albans.
IMA Cooling Systems installed the pioneering Sanyo R22 Renewal VRF system at Sopwell House Hotel, once the Georgian country home of Lord Mountbatten.
The previous air conditioning system, from another manufacturer, had suffered a seized compressor and come to the end of its working life. Complete replacement would have been expensive and disruptive, as the pipe runs were buried underground and within the building.
A Sanyo R22 Renewal system, supplied by distributor DYSK, was selected because of its flexibility and the reduced disruption to business thanks to its ability to make use of existing pipework.
The system consists of four indoor fan coil units and a 28 kW three-pipe VRF system, supplying rooms in the private players' section of the hotel.
'We chose the Sanyo system because buried pipework would have been expensive to remove, and would have caused major problems for the hotel,' says Ian Nash, who headed up the project for IMA Cooling Solutions.
'The Renewal process was straightforward and worked extremely well. We would have no hesitation in using it again for replacing R22 systems,' he adds.
'The Sanyo Renewal system is a brilliant solution,' insists Nigel Ames, maintenance manager at Sopwell House. 'It has saved us a lot of time, trouble and expense.
'A conventional full replacement would have meant lifting paving stones and wooden floors and chasing out existing pipework.
'The Sanyo solution means pipework can be re-used, saving time and cost. Time is critical in an hotel, as replacement would have taken more than two weeks, and put the rooms out of commission. The Renewal system was finished in two-and-a-half days.'
Following the success, another VRF air conditioning system coming to the end of its life at Sopwell House will be replaced with a Sanyo Renewal System, he says.
It's not just VRF that Sanyo can replace. Renewal of split systems is straightforward. A recent example has been installed in a commercial office development near Heathrow in London.
Harrow-based Taprex installed the inverter-driven Sanyo 10kW split system, supplied by Oceanair Distribution, as part of refurbishment of a ducted air conditioning system serving offices in the commercial storage sector. It replaced an R22-based Trane heat pump and used of existing pipework and power supply cabling.
Malcolm Smith of Taprex said: 'It's an effective system and easy to install. Existing pipework was concealed in trunking and it would have been difficult and time-consuming to replace.
'We carried out an acidity check and a high pressure test to ensure pipework was satisfactory before going ahead. Oceanair supplied an inline filter drier which we simply brazed in place. The new units started first time and worked perfectly.'
The installation is expected to produce significant savings, because of the replacement of the aging R22 non-inverter system with a modern inverter-controlled heat pump running on R410A.
An additional benefit is that the new Sanyo equipment comes with a seven-day controller, enabling the system to be set up to work efficiently over the working week. The previous system had only a one day control, of limited value given the changes in building usage across the week.