Inland Revenue at Somerset House - Case Study

Air Conditioning Company was contacted by the Inland Revenue at Somerset House in Central London in order to deal with a cooling challenge in their Kingsway offices.
The manager in charge of Enforcement had identified that the staff in the Kingsway offices were getting “very hot under the collar” because they were unable to locate the main controls for their central heating system for the building. The difficulty was that no-one could find the correct controls to actually switch the heaters completely off!

In order to try to alleviate the problem, the Inland Revenue had brought in some small office portable air conditioning units (7,500 Btu) of their own which proved to be both inadequate and unreliable.

What they really wanted was
for somebody to take the trouble to visit the premises and accurately measure and assess their requirements. They were looking for rental solutions.
We were very glad to help!
Following the site visit, we were able to identify that 23 discreet but powerful office air conditioning units were needed to do the job over two open plan office floors.
Furthermore, we advised precisely how these should be vented for maximum cooling efficiency.

We recommended the trusty Gree KYD unit this is the “workhorse” of the office type portable air conditioner offering reliability and high power cooling together with ease of user operation and low noise.

As with all portable air conditioners it is necessary to vent the exhaust (hot air) ducting to the outside of the building. To do this usually requires opening a window and placing the hose outside, however, due to the noise and dust levels from the busy street below this proved undesirable.

However, the Gree air conditioner is capable of being vented into a ceiling void as well as out of a window. This is due to its hot air extract being dry rather than moist. The perfect tool for the job!

In areas where it was not possible to access the ceiling we recommended that holes were cut in the windows and the exhaust hose ends bonded to the glass, in this way outside noise ingress was kept to a minimum.

They (Inland Revenue) were particularly impressed with our ability to offer repair or replacement same day (within 4 hours!) in the unlikely event of unit failure.

The Inland Revenue also requested that we put in a service program to maintain the machines throughout the length of the rental period. This was unusual since in most cases, machines that are hired are not usually maintained as the rental period is generally short. However, in this case such was the relationship that had built up following site visits and communications between The Air Conditioning Company and the Inland Revenue that trust had been established and it emerged that not only did they want us to regularly maintain these units but indeed they were more than happy to rent them for a period of two years with our unique “Supercool” rental deal!

The machines were duly delivered, fitted, checked and tested and did the job superbly.

Indeed, the feedback from the Inland Revenue was that they were absolutely delighted with the machines, and that all the staff greatly appreciated the service.