Behind the seamless atmosphere and refined finishes of London’s high-end private clubs lies complex, high-performance infrastructure. At Project Pembroke, Vascroft’s in-house Mechanical & Electrical (M&E) engineering team delivered an advanced second-floor plant room designed to support expanding operations, ambitious energy efficiency goals, and the intensive demands of commercial club kitchens.
When the project scope broadened beyond the original Phoenix baseline to incorporate two full-scale commercial kitchens, the existing plant infrastructure could no longer shoulder the load alone. As Chris, on-site M&E lead at Vascroft, explains:
“Previously we were having one plant room that was … controlling the whole building and it was giving all the … supply air and it was … [providing] all the extraction … But this new plant room was introduced because of the new changes [that] happened under the Pembroke scope. So in the Pembroke [scope], we have two kitchens added.”
Precision Kitchen Ventilation: Swegon AHU-3
Commercial kitchens require massive volumes of treated make-up air without introducing harsh draughts or thermal swings onto the cookline. Vascroft installed a dedicated Swegon AHU-3 to service both kitchens, using a multi-stage conditioning sequence to protect internal comfort year-round:
- Sub-Zero Pre-Heating: Fresh air drawn directly from outside passes through filtration before meeting an integrated pre-heating coil. Chris highlights its critical role during London cold spells:
“The AHU [has] … a pre-heating coil. So … sometimes when [the] outside temperature goes [to] -5 [°C] or sometimes sub-zero … that temperature we can’t directly feed to the kitchen, so this pre-heat coil will [try] to make the temperature closer to the … atmospheric temperature.” This tempers freezing intake air up to roughly 5°C to 10°C before further treatment.
- Secondary DX Coil Lift: Downstream, a secondary direct expansion (DX) coil takes over conditioning. It provides a steady lift to deliver supply air into the kitchen floor at comfortable working temperatures between 13°C and 20°C.
Sustainable Heating Architecture & Built-In Redundancy
Vascroft prioritised low-carbon performance alongside operational resilience across the domestic hot water (DHW) circuits:
- Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP): Transitioning away from legacy fossil-fuel boiler reliance, the plant incorporates an ASHP connected through a low-loss header, circulation pumps, and a sealed pressurisation unit.
- Dual-Coil Storage Vessels: Hot water cylinders utilise twin internal heat-exchange coils. One coil is dedicated to the ASHP loop, while the second connects to commercial electric boilers.
- Automatic Fail-Safe Switching: The dual-source configuration guarantees continuity during extreme winter weather or peak kitchen demand. As Chris notes,
“In case we have any low temperature[s] and the air source heat pump is not performing … the electric boiler will come in and that will generate the hot water … and send [it] to the … kitchens.”
Submersible Cold Water Boosting & BMS Automation
Water distribution is driven by twin domestic cold-water storage tanks engineered with integral, submersible booster pumps. Submerging the pumps inside the tanks dampens mechanical vibration and operational noise – a crucial factor in maintaining an undisturbed club atmosphere – whilst supplying immediate, pressurised flow to outlets and hot-water cylinder make-up lines the moment a tap is opened.
The entire installation is mapped directly into an automated Building Management System (BMS).
“The whole plant is controll[ed] by the BMS system, so the BMS can see each and every temperature [at] every point … [at] each and every level it can monitor the temperature, … [to] feed the right temperature to the right place.”
From incoming cold storage to ASHP output lines and cylinder delivery valves, the BMS ensures complete operational visibility and energy optimisation. Through our integrated, in-house M&E delivery, Vascroft ensures that the invisible systems powering Project Pembroke match the uncompromising standard of the luxury spaces above them.
