Providing comfort at a high level

Occupying floors 34 to 52 of the new 1000ft plus Shard tower, guests who visit the Shangri-La Hotel when it opens in London next year will benefit from a panoramic view of the capital and a comfortable indoor environment, the latter provided by Ability fan coil air conditioning systems.

Air conditioning for bedrooms will be supplied by 225 Ability 4-pipe Matrix I fan coil units with capacities of 1 to 4kW (cooling) and 1 to 3kW (heating) augmented by more than 100 (0.5kW capacity) Ability Evolution EVO260 heating only fan coil units in the bathrooms. Noise levels will be set at NR32 with NR30 at night set back. A further 100 plus Ability EC/DC fan coil units will serve public areas.

The Matrix EC fan coil system provides infinite speed control of the whole fan coil unit and of each fan within it, enabling each duct run to be balanced for air volume through fan speed alone, removing the need for volume control dampers in the ductwork. Furthermore, since the system controls fan speed according to demand, Ability says that a Matrix fan coil unit operating in set back mode can consume just 20% (or even less) electrical input than an equivalent size AC unit.