7 Forest View - Finlake Holiday Park

Project Overview

This impressive luxury lodge became another victim of the seasonal rise in temperature and exceptionally high humidity levels, causing a hot and muggy atmosphere in the master bedrooms and main living area. As with similar projects already completed in neighbouring lodges we installed a Mitsubishi 10kw multi-split air conditioning heat pump system to create a temperature controlled environment that would provide comfort cooling, low cost heating, humidity control and air filtration.

Because this lodge is available to rent throughout the year we installed wifi modules inside each indoor unit to provide the owners with remote monitoring and control from any location using their mobile phone or tablet.

As with similar projects carried out on residential/holiday parks we had a number of familiar issues to consider including:-

• Potential demand and diversity factor
• Permissable loading on park wiring infrastructure
• Nuisance RCD tripping (How DC driven inverters can affect residential consumer units)
• Minimising Noise levels
• Appearance (External)

As specialist aircon installers for residential parks and holiday homes we applied our knowledge and expertise to overcome all these challenges, satisfying the requirements of our client and the management team at Finlake holiday Park.

Our Solution

1 - Potential demand & Diversity Factor

In the knowledge that only two of the four bedrooms required air conditioning initially, we chose to install a 10kw external condenser with 5 connectivity ports to facilitate the 2.5kw units installed in the master bedrooms and the 5kw unit mounted in the open-plan living room/kitchen area. Whilst the larger 10kw condenser provides 100% diversity to allow the currently installed units to operate at full capacity, simultaneously, it also makes provision for two additional 2.5kw units to be installed in the remaining bedrooms.

Whilst adding more units would increase the diversity factor, where the maximum output of each unit running simultaneously would become limited, this system still has enough capacity to allow the end-user to balance the ouput effectively in each room, as and when required throughout the day and night.

2 - Permissable loading on park wiring infrastructure

Like most residential and holiday parks throughout the UK, the wiring infrastructure at Finlake supplying electricity to each service box is not quite ready for the growing demand for hot tubs, car charging points and air conditioning heat pump systems. Whilst a typcal lodge will have a 63amp incomer, it doesn't necessarily mean that the cabling infrastructure could cope if every lodge was to draw 63amps at the same time.

With this in mind and in consultation with the Finlake Park management team, the system chosen for this project offered a very low startup and maximum current rating of 16amps. During our test and commissioning process the average running current stabilsied at 9.2 amps whilst running all 3 indoor units at full cooling capacity, maintaining average room temperatures at 19 degrees celsius.

3 - Nuisance RCD Tripping

Experience has taught us that the DC driven inverter inside the condenser, which powers the compressor, can sometimes cause the main RCD incomer in a domestic consumer unit to trip. This can be caused by the excess EMF produced during the transfer from AC to DC, where a domestic RCD incomer rated at 30mA is simply too sensitve. To help overcome this problem we asked our friends at Cooper & Cooper to modify the main electrical service box to include a less sensitive 100mA RCD to supply the outdoor condenser only, leaving the mains supply to the lodge fully protected with a domestic rated 30mA RCD.

Our thanks to Cooper & Cooper for their valid contribution towards this project.

4 - Minimising Noise Levels

To those unfamiliar with modern heat pump systems, one the biggest concerns is the amount of noise produced by the outdoor condenser and the number of complaints this might attract from neighbouring lodges. Whilst this might have been the case some years ago with older systems using direct driven compressors, modern heat pump systems are so quiet now you hardly know they are running. That said, this particular project required the condenser to be mounted on decking, where even the smallest sound or vibration might be amplified to a more audible level.

To overcome this potential issue we mounted the condenser on 100mm heavy duty rubber mounting blocks, allowing the unit to run at full speed with no vibration through the decking and noise level that was barely audible from a distance of 3 metres away.

5 - Appearance (External)

With lodges costing as much as £300K we pride ourselves on carrying out every installation sympathetically and to the best of our ability. For this project we used Inaba Denko trunking in a gloss black finish to protect the pipework and cabling between each exit hole and the entry holes lower down, where it was then clipped to the lodge underside to the central meeting point at the far end of the lodge where condenser was positioned above.

A letterbox brush trim provided a neat appearance around the exit hole where the pipework and cabling made its final connection to the outdoor condenser.