Decarbonisation of Grade A office space at Warrant House

• Commercial
• Heritage
• Commercial Fit-Out

Decarbonisation of Grade A office space at Warrant House

Client: Anstey Horne
Location: Altrincham
Project: Warrant House decarbonisation
Value: £460k
Project Managers: Scott Bennett and Matt Clare

Background

The Warrant House in Altrincham town centre is an 11,000 sqft office space. It’s currently divided up as six office suites over three floors. The former police station, located on the High Street, was built in 1915 and subsequently converted into offices in 1995.

The whole building was heated and hot water provided by gas boilers. As these were approaching the end of their working life, the decision was taken to remove gas altogether and switch to a fully electric system utilising Daikin VRV/DX system to provide cooling in summer and heating in winter, along with electric hot water heating.

The Project

In summary, the main aim of this project was the decarbonisation of a Grade A office space in Altrincham.

To remain as Grade A office space, within the changing rules for EPC ratings, improvements would need to be made at some point in the future. In this project, the building owners are sensibly acting now as part of a planned capital expenditure programme. This will future proof the building to ensure it complies with current and future regulations, with an aim to achieve net zero, well before it is mandated.

The project will first see the phased installation of a new VRX/DX ASHP heating and cooling system in occupied offices. The timescale is tight at 14 weeks for the whole project but this is well planned and under control.

There will also be a major reconfiguring of the electrics to provide for the new AC system and during these works, we will run all of the strings for Solar PV installation. This preliminary work will make installation much easier during phase two of the project.

The project was extended to include the refurbishment of suites five and six on the second floor and at the same time, remove meeting room partitions to make open plan. With the new configuration in place, we installed new carpet tiles, painted and decorated to finish it to an agreed standard.  There was also the installation of  new lighting a new kitchen and toilets. Finally, we installed new aluminium and glass fire doors to suite entrances.

With all of the installation work completed, the Kimpton team will remove all of the existing boilers, pipe work and radiators having fully drained the system first. This will involve builders work and decoration to ensure the high end finish desired by the client.