Boiler exchange is key to efficiency upgrade
16th July 2025
UK: Exchange Quay, a landmark office campus in Manchester, has improved the energy efficiency of one of its major buildings by replacing gas boilers with Mitsubishi Electric air-source heat pumps.
Landlord Till Asset Management appointed air conditioning contractor Austin Broady to decarbonise the 10-storey, 116,000ft2 Building 8, replacing gas with air-source heat pumps to upgrade it from EPC D to EPC B.
Developed in the 1980s, Exchange Quay is one of the largest office campuses in the NW, featuring ten buildings and a wide range of amenities. Building 8 is among the largest on-site, and its decarbonisation presented a specific challenge: how to deliver meaningful carbon savings without a complete overhaul of its HVAC system.
Mitsubishi Electric’s CAHV commercial heat pumps were selected as the optimal solution. Twelve CAHV-P500YB-HPB 40kW heat pumps were installed in a cascade configuration. The design employed historical climate data to size the system effectively for local winter conditions.
Said to deliver hot water temperatures of up to 70°C without the need for supplementary heaters, the CAHV system provides low-carbon heating across all 10 floors via existing four-pipe fan coil units. This approach avoided intrusive works and enabled a phased transition off gas.
Put into operation at the end of last year, the system passed its first real-world test during one of Manchester’s coldest winters in a decade.
Following the project’s success, Tillam has committed to upgrading Building 1 later this year, with Building 5 scheduled shortly after. The wider goal is to future-proof the entire Exchange Quay estate while sharing experience with other landlords facing similar challenges.
“We are now looking at other buildings in other parts of the country, and we are bringing landlords to this site to show them what we’ve done,” said Austin Broady MD Mark Broady. “We’re showing them our design and how we reached the solution, and they’re now sufficiently confident to roll this sort of project out in their buildings.”
