Panasonic Air Conditioning

The Panasonic range of domestic and commercial air conditioners are at the forefront of mass produced air conditioners across the world and recently Canstar Blue awarded Panasonic with a 5 star “Most satisfied customer” award for 2014, 2016 and now 2017.

Whilst they are heavily recognised for their massive domestic range of Wall splits, Cassette air conditioners, Under ceiling units and of course the ducted range, it is perhaps their advanced FSV (otherwise known as VRF) units that impress us here at Allen Air and Refrigeration the most.

FSV (VRF Systems)

Connect one or multiples of these outdoor units together (depending on your capacity requirements) and pipe to any number of selected indoor model variants to condition your home, office or apartment complex.

Available in;

2 pipe air conditioning design – “2 pipe” is the term used for a system that can only provide one of either heating or cooling at any one time to the indoor units. These units are cheaper to purchase and install and suit most purposes. The only time a client is “tripped up” with a 2-pipe system is for example someone wants heating, and someone wants cooling at the same time. Picture a scenario where a hotel had a 2-pipe system. If one tenant wanted the room at 28 degrees and another wanted it at 16 degrees (both extreme differences and only for example), the first person to have selected the operation of their air conditioner would take the control of the heat or cool function. Only once their room was satisfied and at temp, would the second room be able to finally receive cooling. And of course, so the first tenant isn’t chilled down again, their air con will go dormant. Obviously, this is an extreme example and to be honest, it doesn’t really present a major problem very often, so it shouldn’t be a major point of concern. However, this may lead to consideration of the 3-pipe system

3 pipe air conditioning design –“3 pipe” is the term used to describe the design of a system that will allow both heating AND cooling to occur at the same time. It is a little dearer to purchase and the installation, having more pipework and labour costs, is also dearer. However, for any site where there would be different heat loads expected it is ideal. Picture the sun hitting glass windows on the east side of a building in winter. The solar gain can result in this side of the building needing cooling even though its 16 degrees outside. Meanwhile, the west side which is in the cold shade is very cold after low overnight temperatures. So, the west side could need heating at the same time. This is where a 3 pipe FSV system stands on its own for air conditioning design flexibility.