Colt International

Thomann, Treppendorf, Germany

Simultaneous heating and cooling for the Thomann office building

Whoever works in a modern office building has high expectations of its building services. Individual temperature control in each room, dehumidification in summer time and draught-free ventilation are taken for granted by the occupants. At the same time, the owner or occupier wishes to minimize investment and running costs. Colt was able to meet these requirements with its Caloris heat pump system.

Since 1954, 400 employees of the music house Thomann in Treppendorf, Germany, have marketed top class musical instruments to over 1.25 million customers throughout the world. Thomann is the biggest music store in Europe.

Earlier, in 2005, when they were rebuilding their guitar department, Thomann contracted Colt to provide a Caloris heat pump system.

When plans were made for a new administration building, Colt was once again charged with the provision of the building services. The four storey building with a 1,300m² footprint was designed to be equipped with high-quality materials and generous internal dimensions, which provided a challenge for the integration of Colt's different products. Innovative solutions had to be found, particularly for the control of the temperature in the stairway, where air is passed through a vertical duct and distributed evenly as shown.

The final design showed that the building would almost be self-sufficient in terms of cooling and heating without the additional assistance of a boiler plant or air conditioning. Colt provided the decentralized Caloris heat pump system with additional buffer storage, in order to further increase the system's efficiency.

Individual room units provide the required internal climate by switching automatically between cooling and heating. Because of the structure of the system with its circulation of water, it functions very efficiently as it uses the temperature differences between different areas in the building for both cooling and heating. When temperatures fall to between 0°C to 4°C in winter, the Caloris system draws heat from the server  rooms  to heat the offices. The chosen temperature of the circulating water lies in between 16-25°C which has the great advantage of allowing the usage of uninsulated pipes. Furthermore, the individual units operate at a low noise level and are slim enough to fit in virtually every suspended ceiling.

The external air-water-heat pump only heats or cools the water in circulation once every other energy storage possibility in the building has been exhausted and there are no more heat excesses or deficits in different areas of the building left to use.

After a 4-month period of operating the system, an evaluation revealed that the building had been up to 96% self-sufficient, meaning that only for 4% of the time the external unit had been operating.

The Caloris System was also linked to the other building services via an EIB gateway.

This project demonstrates the efficiency of the Colt Caloris System as well as Colt's ability to find innovative solutions that meet today's high expectations for building services.

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