CASE STUDY: Sandman Signature Hotel, Aberdeen
- 218 luxury rooms
- Traditional hot water filled radiator system
- Prefect Irus, Individual temperature & time programming for each room – from anywhere with internet connectivity
- Integrated with hotel property management system
Located in one of Aberdeen’s historic buildings at the heart of the city, The Sandman Signature Aberdeen Hotel provides luxurious accommodation with beautifully appointed guest rooms.
Being the third largest granite structure in Europe, the 120-year-old former Robert Gordon University was always going to be a building conversion with challenges, not least tackling 2 feet thick granite walls to install services.
Murray Todd is the general manager at the hotel and is responsible for the day to day running of the establishment, ensuring everything is done to make guests comfortable.
Heating was a prime consideration while planning and top of the list was to save money on energy consumption. The northerly location, prevalent climate and granite construction keeps the internal temperature cool, as Murray agrees “The three or four days a year that you could do with Air Conditioning in Aberdeen doesn’t warrant it being installed.” A traditional hot water system with convection radiators was considered to be the most effective and efficient way to maintain a comfortable environment.
“Irus links to our property management system so that when a guest checks in, it sends a signal to the room to turn the heating on to a preset temperature.”
PrefectIrus was an obvious choice of control system. The room nodes link to valves on the radiators and the central wiring system for the building, this then carries data to the central control interface. Management can monitor, measure and manage the room controls from anywhere with internet connectivity, which is usually the reception desk.
“We use the presence detection, Irus links to our property management system so that when a guest checks in, it sends a signal to the room to turn the heating on to a preset temperature, when the guest checks out it defaults on the system to ‘unoccupied status’ and we can program that to the appropriate temperature.”
“Guests have commented that they like the fact that the controls are easy and that the settings are ‘Off, Medium and High’ rather than specific temperatures because it makes things easier for them.”
Murray is keen to stress how easy the system is to use, “It’s a piece of cake actually. Surprisingly so. The best feature is that rooms are not being heated when they are unoccupied and obviously the remote control helps to save time while being energy efficient.”
