Safe lower water temperature through UV light

The hotel The Florian is the only independent hotel around Schiphol Airport and this is not the only thing that sets it apart. Owner Tony Chu has a clear vision for the hotel, in which sustainability plays an important role. Holland Water contributes to this with its UV system (HW Uvidis) that disinfects all incoming water with UV-C light. This will eventually allow the water temperature to be lowered.

Tony Chu, owner of The Florian (pictured left) and Mark de Vaal Sales Manager Hospitality at Holland Water (pictured right).

When Chu bought the former office building housing The Florian in 2018, little did he know that the hotel would eventually open in the middle of a pandemic. Still, Chu didn't let this throw him off. "We have had massive setbacks, but I really believe in this hotel and now is the time to make up for lost time," he said. The idea behind The Florian is to apply the atmosphere of hip Amsterdam hotels in a completely different market, the Schiphol market. Like us, the younger generation considers sustainability very important. We have already taken this into account during construction, by using sustainable materials, however, it doesn't stop there, sustainability continues to play a very big role in the operational area as well."

The Florian has 150 designer rooms, but also houses living room-style meeting rooms, a restaurant, bar and several sports areas. The energy consumed by the hotel is generated in a green way as much as possible. "One of the first challenges we encountered already during construction, the total energy consumption was as expected, but the power peaks went over the contracted power. Because of grid congestion, the grid operator was unable to provide an upgraded connection. To cope with the shortages during peak times, we entered into a partnership with energy management company Eaton (which we already wrote about in the December issue, ed). This company has realised a local power network, so that we can make the best use of our solar panels and also store energy that we deploy when we are short of power." All efforts to achieve a sustainable hotel were rewarded 2023 with a Green Key Gold.

When the new hotel was built, a new water system was installed for all 150 rooms, the restaurant and the bar. "Of course we have to prevent legionella and that was not easy during the pandemic. Due to the low occupancies in the hotel at the time, we were spending a huge amount of time flushing all the taps in the empty hotel rooms. During an event, I came into contact with Holland Water, which presented its water management solutions here. This was a solution to our problem and fitted nicely into the sustainability story, as the temperature of the boiler can be lowered after applying to the municipality and the flushing frequency for unused taps can be reduced."

Initial discussions with Holland Water took place at the end of 2022, and the water installation was inventoried. In July 2023, the UV system (HW Uvidis) was installed, this disinfects the incoming water with UV-C light. If the hotel remains legionella-free for a year then it may switch to a lower flushing frequency and the temperature of the boilers can be lowered, this means a saving in energy, a saving in water consumption and fewer labour hours for flushing. "The installation went according to plan, but then we faced a number of problems, for instance we were put on a new water-trace by the water supply company and works in the street caused a power cut, which prevented the gatekeeper system from doing its job. At one point, unfortunately, a legionella outbreak was still detected, Holland Water was fortunately able to act quickly on this by cleaning the pipes. So it takes a little longer for us to take the sustainability step, but in the end this is really going to save in labour and costs."

Holland Water's Mark de Vaal is very happy with our collaboration with The Florian. "Chu values quality and is progressive, which suits us. The property has 520 taps that were clean when we checked, however, it is always possible that something may have been lurking. Fortunately, we were able to nip the problem in the bud. When we are already involved in the construction phase, we can usually prevent this from happening. Hopefully, this will become the habit within the chain, so that we can lock the door from the beginning. After all, all sorts of things happen during construction that can affect water quality. We already do the installation of gatekeeper systems at new Van der Valk hotels, for example."

According to De Vaal, it is important to redesign the whole process around water safety to get ahead of problems. "We are a one stop shop in certified legionella management. It started with only curative techniques, here came preventive techniques and now we have all management services and techniques under one roof. More and more hotels and hotel chains are seeing the benefit of this." Until now, The Florian's sampling services were housed by another company, but now Holland Water will also do the management. Chu: "We are in the process of digitising and we like being able to bring everything in the field of water safety completely to one company."