Air conditioning is a necessity in the hot Northern Territory climate, which is why the iconic Shenannigans Irish pub in Mitchell Street, Darwin, had to undertake a system upgrade without any downtime. No air conditioning could potentially lead to a considerable loss in trade.
The pub’s new system includes a new outdoor twin coil Plusbox with two GEA Bock semi-hermetic compressors which were installed by Blizzard Air.
A key challenge was ensuring the upgrade integrated with the existing system.
A dated condensing unit was replaced with the new GEA Bock Plusbox outdoor condensing unit, significantly improving comfort levels inside while the two semi hermetic compressors deliver 25kW per compressor.
When the building owner first considered the upgrade, he realised the previous system was too old and too expensive to repair and contacted Blizzard Air owner, Gavin Pocock, in search of a solution.
“We had to find a unique solution because the existing AC system was too integrated within the building and could not be removed,” he says.
“Plus, downtime was a critical factor too as they would lose considerable trade if the pub had no air conditioning.”
Pocock decided to overhaul the existing evaporator and replace the two old condensing units with a single unit.
The next step was to contact GEA Bock general manager, Phil Philips, who suggested a Plusbox as it is made to meet customer requirements.
Both systems work on high SST (+5CSST) temperatures, filled with R22 refrigerant and the Plusbox is fitted with two variable speed drives (VSD).
“By installing VSDs the unit achieves energy savings, better temperature and humidity control, and reduced equipment maintenance,” Pocock says.
“We had to stick to the R22 refrigerant to limit the amount of variables we had with doing a retrofit. I have been using the GEA Bock products for years and have a great deal of confidence in them.”
Pocock says one of the advantages of GEA Bock compressors is that they are all fitted with oil pumps and the valve plate design allows for quiet and efficient running. Fitting the VSDs as an option allowed greater flexibility and reliability with the system.
“The compressors are always near perfectly matched to the heat load due to the floating capacity of the compressor operating to a fixed SST set point,” he says.
“With the reliability of the GEA Bock compressors and the added energy savings of the VSDs, I was able to give the client a $10,000 money back guarantee if they did not notice energy savings or were unhappy with the final outcome.”
Fortunately, the client was happy with the upgrade and even noticed a drop in the monthly electricity bill.'