Project Case Study: Delivering Individual Comfort and Energy Efficiency Through Heat Recovery VRF

Project Overview

InnTech partnered with Richmond Heating & Air, M.A. Bryan Engineering and Woodhouse Contracting to deliver the HVAC system for a new 36-unit, four-storey apartment building with commercial space on the ground floor and suites geared towards students above. InnTech’s scope covered the residential portion of the building.

The project required a complete design-to-supply solution with startup and commissioning, giving each suite precise comfort control and giving the owner a way to bill each unit for its own energy use. InnTech’s role included equipment selection, system configuration, controls integration, coordination with the engineering and energy sub-metering teams, and startup and commissioning of the installed equipment.

Project Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Project Type: Residential New Construction – Mid-Rise
Building Type: Multi-Family Mixed-Use Student Housing
Technology: Haier MRV5 Heat Recovery VRF

1. The Challenge

Student housing involves a high number of small, individually occupied rooms, each with its own comfort needs and occupancy patterns. Every suite needed properly sized equipment to avoid oversizing, short cycling, and wasted energy.

The suites also include electric baseboard heaters, so the design had to prevent the baseboards and the VRF system from heating and cooling against each other.

The owner also needed a way to bill each unit fairly based on actual energy consumption, which meant the system had to support accurate sub-metering from the start. With this many indoor units and control points, proper startup and commissioning were essential to ensure everything communicated and operated as designed.

2. Our Solution

InnTech worked with the mechanical consultant to specify a Haier MRV5 heat recovery VRF system made up of three outdoor units: one 10-ton and two 6-ton, for 22 tons of total capacity. These serve 36 indoor units selected room by room, including two mid-static ducted units, twenty-two 7k BTU/h wall-mounted units, two 12k BTU/h wall-mounted units, and ten 9k BTU/h wall-mounted units.

Ten heat recovery valve boxes allow different zones to heat and cool at the same time. Heat removed from one space is transferred to another that needs it, which improves efficiency and keeps each suite comfortable regardless of what the rest of the building is doing.

Control is handled by one central controller for building-wide oversight, along with 36 Airzone Aidoo Pro controllers, one per indoor unit. The Aidoo Pro controllers were interlocked with the baseboard heaters so the two heat sources don’t operate against each other, reducing overall energy consumption.

To support individual unit billing, InnTech also worked with Wyse Meter Solutions to set up consumption-based sub-metering, so each tenant pays for the energy they actually use.

InnTech also handled the startup and commissioning of the system, verifying that the outdoor units, indoor units, heat recovery valve boxes, and controllers were operating together as designed before the building was turned over.

3. Results & Impact

The completed system gives the student residences precise, room-by-room comfort control. Heat recovery and baseboard interlocking reduce overall energy consumption, while the central controller gives the owner full visibility into system operation.

Consumption-based billing gives each suite’s occupants a direct incentive to use energy wisely and gives the owner a transparent, fair way to recover costs. Through careful equipment selection, controls integration, professional startup and commissioning, and collaboration with the contractor, engineers, metering partner, and owners, the project delivered an efficient, flexible HVAC solution for a building with demanding requirements.