Lochinvar Delivers Vintage Heat Pump Project

Heating, hot water and renewable specialist Lochinvar has delivered a heat pump powered heating and cooling solution for one of England’s most celebrated wine makers. Dating back almost 1,000 years, the winery produces award-winning wines, including some the country’s most highly rated sparkling varieties. Named in the Domesday Book in 1086 as the “peaceful valley” in the South Downs it was first planted with vineyards in 1988 including the so-called ‘holy trinity of sparkling wine grapes’: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Since then, these wines have gone on to win international awards and blind-tasting competitions, as well as being recognised by some of the world’s most celebrated wine experts.

Objectives

Maintaining ideal climatic conditions for storing this valuable produce is, therefore, a critical part of operations at the West Sussex winery, so Lochinvar’s expertise played a key part in the project to upgrade the storage area and improve its carbon footprint. With each wine pallet worth upwards of £100,000, providing closely controlled and monitored temperatures and ambient conditions was a painstaking exercise that involved close collaboration between Lochinvar, the wine makers, building services designer Pope Consulting of Chichester, main contractor Cheesmur from nearby Lewes, and sub-contractors SMS Southern.

Understanding the difference between 2 &4-pipe systems

Traditional two-pipe heating and cooling systems have one pipe to supply hot water and another pipe to return. Four pipe systems are far more efficient for delivering different needs across a building for instance if one part of the building requires cooling and another part requires heating. A four-pipe system would deliver the demanded heating and cooling far more efficiently. When delivering simultaneous demands the heat pump benefits from heat recovery, from what would normally be wasted energy.

2-Pipe vs 4-Pipe Download Render

For more information about 2 & 4-pipe heat pump systems download our comprehensive guide here.

Solution

Specific Heating and cooling for the wine storage area is provided by three high temperature heat pumps from Lochinvar’s Amicus range. They are deployed in a four-pipe configuration so can deliver simultaneous heating and cooling when needed to support the winery’s very specific requirements.

The heat pumps are supported by two LBT thermal stores with capacities of 1,500 litres – one for heating and one for cooling. Lochinvar’s air-to-water heat pumps can produce hot water up to 70degC while still achieving high energy efficiencies. The four-pipe simultaneous cooling with heating and heat recovery units provide particularly impressive environmental performance.

During the summer months the 4-pipe heat pump system will work as chiller due to low heating requirements. During winter months heat gathered during cooling process will heat the 23c side of the building simultaneously. This means that both aspects of the customer requirements are met by one packaged solution.

The high temperatures achieved makes them especially useful as direct low carbon replacements for gas boilers in buildings with high hot water demands without requiring a substantial remodelling of the heating and/or hot water systems.

Lochinvar has produced a future-proof solution, which was particularly attractive to the specifiers as the vineyard has very stringent environmental aims in keeping with its dedication to sustainability. It is committed to “a sustainable and holistic approach to our land, resources and the carbon footprint involved in producing our outstanding English sparkling wines” and already deploys photovoltaics and heat recovery technology in various parts of its wine making process.

Systems used for this solution

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