Air conditioning installation in Hurstpierpoint

The job

A homeowner in Hurstpierpoint had a 1950s bungalow that became uncomfortably warm every summer, with the open-plan kitchen and diner and the bedrooms worst affected. There was no cooling anywhere in the property, and the loft above let the whole house heat up through the day. Four separate indoor units were needed, one per room, all fed from a single outdoor condensing unit. That meant four independent refrigerant circuits through the loft, drops down internal walls into each room, and condensate taken away to an outside discharge, all without disturbing the finished ceilings and decoration below.

What we did

We recommended ceiling cassettes for the three smaller rooms rather than wall-mounted units. They sit flush in the ceiling, throw air in four directions for even distribution and stay out of the way where wall space is tight. We also used pre-insulated copper coils in continuous lengths rather than jointed pipe, so there are no brazed joints buried in the loft where nobody could reach them.

The outdoor unit went on anti-vibration feet at the side elevation, and four refrigerant circuits totalling 53 metres were run through the loft void in pre-lagged copper. Three four-way ceiling cassettes and one wall-mounted head were fitted, with condensate drainage from all four taken to an external discharge. We pressure tested at 45 bar for an hour, held 30 bar overnight, evacuated to 200 microns and proved the vacuum held, then charged and commissioned all four units in heating and cooling. The kit was a Bosch Climate 5000 M outdoor unit, three Bosch Climate 5000i M four-way cassettes and a Bosch Climate 3200i wall unit.

Challenges

The loft was unboarded, packed with loose insulation, and had the boiler, the water tank and a low structural strut running straight through the working area, so every cassette position had to be checked for clearance before anything went up. We were also working in a loft hitting 47 °C in August, which meant the overnight pressure test had to be temperature corrected properly before it could be signed off. A straight pressure reading would have looked like a leak when the system was actually sound.

The result

All four rooms now have independent heating and cooling on their own controls. Commissioning showed even performance across the system, with air-off temperatures within 0.7 °C of each other, which tells you the refrigerant is distributing properly across every branch. Six days on site, handed over fully tested and documented. The finished air conditioning installation in Hurstpierpoint shows nothing but four tidy indoor units and one outdoor condenser, with every metre of pipework hidden in the loft.