Issues

Restaurant patrons​ and workers deserve the best in indoor air quality (IAQ) and comfort. At the same time, the relentless Florida heat and humidity can tax both occupant comfort and operating budgets. H2 Restaurant Partners LLC, an owner of multiple PDQ restaurants in Florida, was looking for the optimum HVAC equipment for energy savings and comfort at its stores. PDQ, which stands for People Dedicated to Quality, is a fast casual restaurant, headquartered in Tampa, FL, with more than 50 locations in eight states across the south, southeast, west, and east coast.

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With the greater objective to determine the best type of HVAC equipment to use across multiple franchise locations, PDQ and H2 Restaurant Partners chose to use two newly constructed restaurants in Jacksonville, FL, as a testing ground for comparing two manufacturers of rooftop equipment.

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“We wanted to track the performance of two manufacturers for a year’s time to prove our prediction that the equipment at the restaurants would do what it was designed to do from both the performance and ROI-payback perspectives,” says Stuart Waag, P.E., Daikin Applied representative with Carroll Air Systems Inc. in Tampa.

“Restaurants are primarily focused on indoor temperature and humidity comfort, as well as energy savings,” says Steve Harvey, retail vertical market manager with Daikin Applied.

Solution

Both Jacksonville restaurants are identical in size and operating hours, and are located within five miles of each other, subject to the same weather conditions. Rooftop equipment by Daikin was tested at the Bartram Park PDQ store. The other manufacturer’s equipment was tested at the Bea​ch and Hodges PDQ store.

“Each rooftop unit at the Bartram Park location matched the design cooling and heating capacity of the corresponding unit at the Beach and Hodges location. We looked to compare the demand and energy consumption for each location,” Waag says.

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The Daikin equipment was delivered to the PDQ construction site in Bartram Park in January 2014 and installed the following month. This store is cooled and heated by three Daikin Rebel packaged rooftops, single-zone constant volume heat pumps with inverter compressors andvariable speed drives that match the compressor speed to the cooling or heat load. “The indoor and outdoor fans are powered by electronic commutated motors (ECMs) that match the design airflow requirements for each fan,” Waag says.

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Analysis showed Rebel units maintained desired space condition regardless of the outdoor conditions, while the other manufacturer’s units often could not keep pace with the building’s cooling loads.

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The Beach and Hodges PDQ store in Jacksonville uses three packaged single-zone constant volume air conditioners with another manufacturer’s constant-speed compressors. Depending on the space cooling or heating load, the compressors at this store are operated in either the on or off position. The units rely on electric resistance heat with fan ECMs.