Fujitsu Air Conditioning, partnered with TF Solutions and Lawton Tubes to donate £30k air conditioning system at the Staffordshire children’s hospice.

The Donna Louise Children's Hospice Trust was first registered as a charity in 1999. It was set up to respond to the need for a children's hospice service for Staffordshire and Cheshire.

The Charity takes its name from a young local girl, Donna Louise Hackney, who sadly died from a life threatening condition at the age of 16. As the fundraising for a purpose built hospice continued, a community nursing team was established in 2002 to provide care for children and their families in their own homes.

By August 2003, the Hospice building was finished and fully-equipped, opening its doors to families on August 4th 2003 to provide an outstanding palliative care service to children, young people, and their families.

Paediatric Palliative Care is a complete approach to treating serious illness that focuses on the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of the child. Its goal is to achieve the best quality of life available to the child or young person by relieving suffering and controlling pain and symptoms.

TF Solutions are one of the largest air conditioning and refrigeration distributors in the UK and have a long established trading relationship with Fujitsu. They have had the hospice as their company’s nominated charity for some time, staging a number of fund raising events and activities for it already.

However, this latest project, thanks to the contribution by Fujitsu and Lawton Tubes, is more than double the total of all previous donations made to the hospice by TF Solutions. The project has been designed and planned by TF Solutions and the system and all installation materials provided completely free of charge to The Donna Louise. Working on site for several weeks with a team of contractors installing the system, the work to install an environmentally friendly, energy-saving air-conditioning system into the hospice is now complete.

The system itself has the capacity to cool five patient bedrooms as well as a parent’s lounge and a conference room at the hospice, allowing for heating and cooling in key areas of the building that patients and guests frequent.

Lewis Jones, Technical Services Manager at TF Solutions comments: “We have been fortunate enough to work with Fujitsu in providing their highly energy efficient Fujitsu VR2 three pipe system for the hospice. The install has been completed to the highest standards with nothing spared. The system allows for simultaneous heating, cooling and energy recovery covering all of the above rooms in the building.

“Due to the sensitivity of the environment, we decided to opt for ducted evaporators so that future service and maintenance work can be conducted via the loft space to reduce disruption to occupants of the bedrooms below. These ducted units will also allow for better air distribu-tion and minimise the risk of draughts. As The Donna Louise is a non–profit organisation we were extremely aware of running costs for any equipment we installed, and this system will enable their utility costs to reduce significantly without affecting the comfort of residents and guests.”

Andy Cherrill, Director at TF Solutions said: “We have supported The Donna Louise Children’s Hospice for many years now and have raised over £13,000 through our fundraising activities. When we heard how some of the bedrooms in the hospice have been too warm and how uncomfortable the children get, we wanted to put our expertise into action and do something practical to help too.”

Ian Carroll, Fujitsu’s Sales and Marketing Director added “We know that quality is everything to both TF Solutions, and The Donna Louise Children’s Hospice, so we’re both proud and humbled that our reputation for building products that installers ,designers, and end-users trust to work efficiently and reliably meant they were selected to be put to such worthwhile use’.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with this project and delighted that the work is now complete. Children and families staying at the hospice will now benefit from temperature controlled rooms, making their stay here as comfortable as possible.”

-Andrew Colclough, Director of Operations for The Donna Louise

Fujitsu Air Conditioning is part of the Fujitsu Group, one of the best known and most successful engineering and electronics organisations in the world. Fujitsu Air Conditioning is a world leading provider of innovative, reliable and energy efficient air conditioning products.

In the UK, Fujitsu Air Conditioning systems are sold via a specialised distribution network.