Air Conditioning Installation for a Unique Eatery in Winchester
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Creating a Cooler, More Comfortable Space in a Historic Building
When you are serving freshly prepared food and coffee in a characterful older building, creating a comfortable environment for customers and staff can present some interesting challenges.
Cold Control recently completed an air conditioning installation for a popular eatery in Winchester, which provides convenient, healthy food options for busy professionals alongside a welcoming café space.
The business specialises in freshly prepared Japanese-inspired bento lunch boxes, designed to offer balanced, nutritious meals for people working full-time. Alongside the takeaway offering, the eatery has a small café area serving homemade patisserie cakes, pastries and artisanal coffee sourced from around the world, all prepared fresh each day.
A challenging building with an unusual layout
The building itself presented the biggest challenge.
Being a very old property, the internal layout consisted of numerous rooms leading into other rooms. These areas were also open to one another without doors, meaning cooled air could naturally move between spaces.
This meant the system could not simply be sized based on the floor area of the room where the indoor unit was installed. The units needed sufficient capacity to account for the additional adjoining areas that would also benefit from the cooling.
Careful planning was therefore needed to ensure the system could provide effective cooling across the connected spaces, while keeping the installation as discreet as possible and avoiding disruption to the kitchen and food preparation areas.
Discreet air conditioning installation with minimal disruption
The air conditioning system was installed in the rear seating and preparation area ahead of the summer heatwave, helping to create a cooler and more comfortable environment for both customers and staff during periods of high temperatures.
A Daikin Perfera indoor unit was selected for the installation, providing efficient and comfortable cooling in the occupied area.
The outdoor unit was positioned discreetly in a small courtyard area located off the rear of the kitchen. This kept the equipment out of sight while providing a practical location for the external part of the system.
To connect the outdoor unit to the internal area, our installers carefully routed the pipework through the kitchen using discreet internal trunking. The route was planned to keep the installation away from kitchen equipment and minimise its impact.
Extra capacity for the open-plan layout
Because several of the rooms were interconnected and did not have doors separating them, we selected an over-specified outdoor unit to provide additional capacity.
This gave the system the ability to cope with the cooling requirements of the main area while also allowing cooled air to reach the adjoining kitchen and shop.
Choosing the correct capacity was particularly important in this building. A system sized purely for the immediate room could have struggled to maintain comfortable temperatures once the cooling demand from the surrounding areas was taken into account.
By allowing for the additional areas from the outset, the installation was designed around how the building actually operates rather than simply its individual room dimensions.
Ready for the summer heat
With the installation completed ahead of the summer heatwave, the new air conditioning system has helped provide a more comfortable environment during warmer weather, benefiting both the team working behind the scenes and customers enjoying their food and coffee.
This project is a good example of why air conditioning installations are not always about simply positioning an indoor and outdoor unit. Older buildings with unusual layouts, interconnected rooms and limited routes for pipework require careful planning, appropriate equipment selection and a system designed around the way the space is used.
At Cold Control, we design and install air conditioning systems around the individual building and how it is used, helping businesses create comfortable spaces for their customers and staff without compromising the character or practical operation of the premises.
