Project Outline
A private, independent dental practice with 18 staff, seeing around 60 patients a day, needed air conditioning for their surgeries and operating theatres. They often have patients in care for all day surgery so keeping a comfortable temperature is essential.
Challenges
The practice is housed in a building built sometime in the 1800s, that gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. It has a number of south-facing surgeries which, in the summer, became ridiculously hot. In a surgery situation each room usually has a lot of dental equipment running, in addition to the heat from a couple of staff and a patient, so maintaining a comfortable temperature was a real issue. In the best interest of staff, patients and equipment, the decision was made to install air conditioning into three of the surgeries.
The age of the building and the size of the surgeries presented some challenges, particularly with regard to airflow and the practice was so busy that it couldn’t be closed for the installation, so EESI’s engineers had to work around the everyday activities of the surgery, in a way the kept any disruption to a minimum.
Solution
After an initial consultation, EESI provided costs for a series of air conditioning units and controls with user-friendly controls and responsive units that could quickly adjust temperature, based on patient feedback, to ensure comfort during surgery.
Although many people perceive air conditioning as just cooling, modern air conditioning systems can heat as well as cool the air, so the practice now also has greater control over it’s heating and no longer has to rely on inefficient, unresponsive storage heaters.
Outcomes
The Practice Manager said of EESI: “So far it’s been really good, it’s working really well and it’s far more energy efficient than the storage heaters we had in place before. We can change the temperature a lot faster and don’t have to worry about the energy use as much. It uses far fewer kilowatts so we should see our heating bill drop by next year.
“It’s a real benefit that our patients can be at a comfortable temperature that we can control and is responsive enough to adjust if they’re too hot or too cool.
“The engineers that came were polite and respectful to the fact that we work in a really busy dental practice so they understood our business and they were just hassle-free. We’ve got another three surgeries which we will kit out over the next 12 months and we’ll be going straight to EESI for the air conditioning units. We wouldn’t hesitate to use them for other projects because the experience was so streamlined, it was just brilliant. We would recommend EESI to anyone looking for air conditioning.”