ST GILES HOTEL FELTHAM
Hounslow Road, Feltham, Middlesex
TONY WARREN LIMITED
Client:
Architect:
Lift Contractor:
Lift Value:
Scope:
St Giles Hotel
Keith Horn Associates
Thyssenkrupp
£350,000
Modernisation and extension of four lifts
Looking to add another hotel in the UK to the one in Tottenham Court Road, the Hotel bought Astronaut House, a tired 1960’s office building to the south of Heathrow with very good transport links to the airport and central London.
As part of the conversion to a hotel, the building was to have two additional floors added. There were four existing lifts and two options were originally considered by the Design Team to meet the requirement to extend lift service to the new floors: providing four new lifts in the existing, extended lift wells; retaining the three Guest Lifts serving their original floors, extending and upgrading to current firefighting standards the Fireman’s Lift, and providing a new ‘express’ lift to serve the Ground and new floors only.
Not for the first (or last) time, the final solution was a compromise, mainly due to cost: extend the Guest Lifts up to the 10th floor only, allowing the machine room to be directly above the lift wells rather than adjacent to them, and provide a new lift serving Ground, 1st to 11th to replace the Fireman’s Lift.
In order to save costs, an unusual procurement policy was considered by the Client. Based in Malaysia, they had manufacturing rights for Toshiba lifts in that country and it was proposed to make the lifts there, ship them here and get a UK based contractor to install them — the last step of this process, and the maintenance for the years beyond, proved to be a step too far.
© 2010 TONY WARREN LIMITED
