Specifying company: Oceanair
Installer Company: FWP Air Conditioning
Year installation: 2012

Background: Carluccio’s restaurant wanted to install a system which would provide the desired volume of hot water, at the correct temperature while at the same time reduced energy costs.

Project Challenge: Following a consultation with Carluccio’s, it was decided that their new site in the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield would be the ideal location as it had the correct attributes for the installation of an air to water heat pump system.  Previous restaurants in the chain had been fitted with a more traditional 12kW boiler system.

Solution: FWP installed a 12kW Aquarea T-CAP mono bloc unit which would allow  for the free air from the kitchen roof space to be transferred through condensing unit providing hot water at the optimum temperature.  With a high coefficient of performance (COP), for every kW of electricity the system uses, it provides 4kW of energy. This makes the Aquarea far more cost effective than a conventional heating system.

Building Energy analysis: When Carluccio’s compared the Sheffield site to one of their existing restaurants of a similar size, the energy savings were considerable.  To heat the water for their Leeds restaurant cost £3782 whilst at the Meadowhall site the comparable cost was just £951. These sizable savings mean the site will see a return on investment in about 2 years and has achieved a COP of about 3.91.

3rd Party Comments: Alison Stanton, Development Director from Carluccio’s said: “We strive for sustainability wherever possible right across our business and were keen to trial air to water heat pumps at our new Sheffield restaurant. The results of the trial show us that we can achieve significant savings on our energy costs as well as reducing our carbon footprint.  We hope to now install Aquarea units at all of our new developments and potentially retro fit ASHPs to our existing 50 restaurants.