Large Family Home Achieves Passive House Standards with Panasonic Sustainable Heat Pump Solution

Energy conscious John Hazelton, CEO of CER Installations Ltd, recently completed a large, 654m² bespoke designed self-build home in Hampshire.   For this modern 5-bed property, John worked closely with the Panasonic team to ensure that his new home provides year-round comfort plus reaches Passive House energy efficient standards, with indoor air quality being a priority.

Having run a successful HVAC installation company for some 45 years, John has worked on some national projects for well-known retailers and pharmaceutical companies through the UK and Ireland. With this wealth of experience, the goal for his own shared family home with his wife’s parents, was to create a more sustainable, well-insulated and low energy property with the highest specification indoor environment. The stunning property that the build team designed and built is a modern home using SIP Construction methods, ensuring air tightness to passive house standard, and this, coupled with a Panasonic Aquarea air source heat pump and heat recovery system, has created a sustainable, comfortable, and highly energy efficient home. Panasonic’s Aquarea range is among the technologies listed on the International Energy Agency (IEA) Blue Map, whose goal is to reduce CO₂ emissions to half the levels emitted in 2005, by the year 2050.

John worked closely with the Panasonic technical team to ensure the correct solution was specified to achieve maximum comfort, energy efficiency and maintain good indoor air quality throughout. Two 12kW Panasonic Aquarea T-Cap heat pumps with two VRF systems along with Panasonic PAW heat recovery systems provide heating, cooling and ventilation throughout. The property has underfloor heating on the ground floor and first floor landing and bathrooms, with a mix of Panasonic 60x60 cassettes, ducted and floor console units all with nanoe^TMX technology as standard to ensure maximum comfort, with the ability to inhibit pollutants, bringing natures balance to the indoor environment.  To provide the ultimate and easy to use controls, the whole system can be accessed via the remote Panasonic Smart Cloud control system to ensure maximum access, control, and efficiency.

Rachel Wales, Regional Sales and Account Manager for Panasonic commented, “This is a great project, and the family is enjoying a very comfortable home, with improved air quality. Much of the Panasonic air conditioning ranges now come with nanoe™ X technology incorporated, which can help bring incredible benefits indoors so that hard surfaces, soft furnishings, and the indoor environment can be a cleaner and more pleasant place to live.”

John Hazelton added, “Over the years we have worked with many manufacturers but have found that Panasonic offers a good quality and superior product range with high COP efficiencies, and for a good price.  Most importantly, their customer service is second to none which is one of the main reasons we work with them. It is important that we know equipment is going to turn up on time, in the right place and our team isn’t left standing around waiting for equipment. Plus, as a PRO Partner, Panasonic provides us (CER) with a 7-year warranty, which is great.”  

Panasonic Aquarea T-Cap units are highly energy efficient with high COP ratings of 4.85 and can operate in temperatures as low as -28^oC. The Aquarea T-Cap unit is a single system which can simply be connected to underfloor heating, radiators, or fan coil units. The range boasts high energy efficiency, is rated A+++ at 35ºC and A++ at 55ºC plus has a high SCOP capacity. Furthermore, the impressive system can work under higher pressure and reach a 65ºC water flow temperature for the ultimate high performing unit, and they are very quiet when in operation.

“The Panasonic Aquarea T-Cap Air to Water Heat Pumps are very quiet compared to its competitors, aesthetically pleasing and highly energy efficient” explained Oli Tew, Technical Air-to-Water Specialist for Panasonic. “T-Cap stands for Total Capacity and the Aquarea T-Cap units are ideal for maintaining heating capacity even at very low temperatures. The T-Cap range is an ideal solution for this project as it can also be connected to solar water heating panels and smart controls in order to further increase efficiency by running off PV solar panels,  and minimise the impact on the environment which is precisely what John and his family were looking for.”

John concludes, “What we've done in this property means we have the benefit of being able to monitor and adjust the system to see how we run it and achieve the best energy performance. Our driver is energy efficiency; energy is going up in price – so far we have found that the whole house stays at a very stable temperature – even in the hot summer months that we experienced during 2022. Furthermore, we can easily connect and remotely track and monitor all of our energy usage and running costs in real time via the Panasonic Smart Cloud app, to see where we can save.”

For more information on Panasonic air source heat pumps, please visit www.aircon.panasonic.eu.