Xylem Gives a Boost to Historic Venetian Hotel

While the hotel’s traditional exterior unobtrusively fits into the authentic architecture, the internal workings are required to meet a much more stringent set of qualifications to cater for the demands of the city’s tourists. Up to 30 million tourists visit Venice each year.

The building itself was of course not designed to be a hotel – let alone one which comes with four stars and all the associated luxuries. As such, the Hotel Principe’s maintenance team are constantly under pressure to ensure the building’s plumbing system continues to seamlessly run behind the scenes.

The hotel comprises of 143 guest bedrooms over five storeys, as well as two restaurants. As part of a building-wide renovation programme to bring the Hotel Principe, a brand new pumping system was required to reliably provide hot and cold water to every room in the building both day and night.

It was at this point that the Hotel’s parent company, Gardena Hotels, approached Xylem, to specify a bespoke system tailored to the building’s unique design and user requirements.

In order to meet the demands of pumping hot and cold water to all corners of the hotel 24 hours a day, Xylem recommended the installation of one of its GHV booster sets. The Lowara GHV booster set includes two variable speed pumps which can deliver water at a rate of up to 640m³/h, with a head of up to 160m at up to 22kW, at a maximum operating pressure of 16 bar.

Each Lowara GHV booster set was then complemented by a Lowara Hydrovar variable speed pump controller. The Hydrovar controllers allowed the hotel’s maintenance team to increase the pressure from 3.50 bar – the rate at which water is supplied from the municipal water company, to 3.92 – the rate required to reach the hotel’s highest rooms.

Given the intelligent nature of Xylem’s Hydrovar control system, it can vary the speed to match the requirement, so that it only pumps at higher pressures when needed, in order to keep the hotel’s energy consumption, and therefore its energy bills, to a minimum.

Roberto Chimellato, Maintenance Manager at the Hotel Principe, Venice, comments: “Given the historic nature of many of Venice’s buildings, including the Hotel Principe, it is vitally important to ensure water systems meet the highest standards. As a luxury hotel we have to ensure our guests have readily available access to hot and cold water at any time of the day.

“We decided to approach Xylem as they are well known within the industry for offering cost-effective solutions whilst helping to drive down overall energy bills. Since their installation, our Lowara GHV booster set and Lowara Hydrovar control system have enabled us to reliably pump water to all of the hotel’s rooms – something which was previously difficult to achieve given the pressure of the city’s municipal water supply to commercial buildings.

What’s more, we have noticed our energy bills decrease as well, as our pump controller is only operating at high pressures when required. Put simply, the installation of our Xylem products has significantly improved the overall efficiency of the hotel’s pumping system.”