Coral Wins Race to Install “Invisible” AC

A Hertfordshire betting shop claims to be the first site in the UK to boast Daikin’s so-called ‘invisible’ air conditioning.
Daikin’s VRV i-series was seen as an ideal solution for Coral’s new 78m2 Hatfield town centre premises as there was no suitable outdoor location for a conventional condensing unit.
The i-series overcomes problems with space limitations, architectural considerations or planning constraints by mounting all components indoors with only a grille visible outside.
The i-series splits the ‘outdoor’ unit in two – a small-footprint compressor unit that is 701mm high and needs just 600x554mm of floorspace, so it can easily be located in a store room or back office, and a separate heat exchanger unit, typically mounted in a ceiling void and venting to the exterior through a grille.
The Coral system was installed by its nominated contractor, IAC Service Group, a Billericay-based Daikin D1+ installer that has been looking after the betting group’s air conditioning systems in London and the South East for the past 15 years.
IAC contracts director Vince Mann says: “The heat exchanger unit can be installed virtually anywhere as its maximum static pressure of 150Pa allows fairly lengthy suction and discharge ducts, but in this case we installed it against a grille at the rear of the premises.
“The compressor unit, serves a wall-mounted fan coil unit in the staff area and two self-cleaning Roundflow cassettes in the customer area.”
Coral’s 5hp i-series has nominal capacity of 14kW in heating and cooling, COP of 3.8 and EER of 3.20.