AquariusXI - Point of Use

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THE POINT OF USE WATER COOLER MARKET

There are 3 prominent types of Point of Use (P.O.U.) Water Coolers on the market. To assist your decision, we have provided below an overview of these cooler systems.

1. Tank (Reservoir) Fed Coolers

Mains water is filtered through a carbon media filtration bed into a 3-litre water reservoir and is then chilled. This is the most traditional chilling method used in the water cooler market, however, its drawbacks include:-

The carbon filtration is heavily relied upon with these systems although where the volume of water dispensed is high it is not as effective as it should be.

The filtration process removes the chlorine that protects the water therefore there is a risk of harmful bacteria developing.

The temperature of water within the reservoir fluctuates between 4-12 degrees Celsius.

1a. Tank Fed Coolers with UV lamp

Due to high bacterial counts arising from carbon only filtration, it is advisable that reservoir systems are always fitted with a full, in tank UV with fail safe system. However, whilst effective in principle there are certain disadvantages to the use of UV and these are as follows:

The UV light needs to be placed in the middle of the tank and the tank needs to be made of stanless steel in order that the UV can reflect off against it, thus creating an environment less suitable for bacterial growth.

The UV lamp can fail, but even if it does not the lamp has a limited life span, which starts to reduce from Day 1 of activation. UV requires replacement every 6 months. This requires monitoring and will incur additional cost.

There is a "Quartz" sleeve surrounding the UV lamp. During cleaning the quartz sleeve must also be cleaned in order that the UV is fully effective. If this is not compiled with the UV can be ineffective and bacterial counts will rise.

Lime-scale can attach itself to the quartz sleeve if the correct cleaning procedure is not completed, this will reduce UV effectiveness. Whereas filter and UV lamp replacement must be pre-scheduled by the maintenance provider, it is very rare that throrough internal sanitisation is carried out by com panies that are not water unit specialists. Although it is difficult to see if internal snaitisation has been carried out on these types of unit, an examination of the quartz should indicate of cleaning has ben thorough.

The water in the reservoir takes a significant amount of time to recover to its ideal dispensing temperature..

1b. Task fed units with Ozone Protection

A much more effective means of ensuring the drinking water dispensed is free of any contaminates is by ozonation.
This is where an ozone controller unit (Such as the *SIP 2000 available from Aquarius XI) is fitted inside and it produces an electrical discharge (7500 volts) which turns the air (Oxygen) within the reservoir into "hyper-oxygen" which simply put burns up any bacteria cells and substantially reduces their ability to reproduce (THM's) or "stick" to the walls of the reservoir (Biofilm).

This system has know been approved by the PASA (NHS) for reducing high counts of bacteria.

2. Direct Chill

Far more advanced and offers significant hygiene benefits over reservoir technology. As the water enters the system filtered it passes into chill coil pipe and is chilled as it moves through the pipe to the point of dispense, providing a more consistent delivery of chilled water. As the water does not come into contact with air until it is dispensed, this system does not require UV inside the cooler and provides increased quality of product delivered coupled with obvious hygiene benefits. There are however a couple of significant drawbacks:-

The volume of chilled water that can be dispensed at the optimum temperature is limited from direct chill units, therefore extra consideration should be given if the cooler is to be sited in a busy environment or if bottles, or jugs/flasks are to be used
.

Some customers can be mistaken that direct chill water coolers do not need to be sanitised. Such assuptions are misguided. Direct Chill water coolers also need to be sanitised regularly. The difficulty in sanitisation is that one has to "break" into the direct chill feed system and sanitise the system blind without the knowledge of what contamination occurs mainly from the tap end and rarely from the incoming water. By removing chlorine in the mains water through a carbon filter, bacteria has been removed prior to entering the direct chill system, thereby allowing bacterial contamination from the tap back into the cooler. As a further precaution Direct Chill water coolers need to be ozoned every 6 months.

3. Ice Bank Technology Units

Ice Bank technology has emerged within the development of Point of Use water coolers to provide the customer with efficient and cost effective safe water supplies.

Ice Bank Technology allows filtered water to be continually chilled within the unit as whilst the water passes through the chill coil surrounding this coil is an Ice Bath which maintains water temperature continuall below 5 degrees Celsius

Unlike the Direct Chill systems the Ice Bank technology is not restricted in its chilled water capacity; it provides a continuous supply of chilled water irrespective of demand.

Since water is supplied directly from the mains and directly chilled through the Ice Bank there is no stagnation (or contact with air), no need for UV and no potential for bacterial growth.

3a. Ice Bank Technology units with Auto-Sanitisation

The Auto-sanitisation process allows the cooler to clean, sanitise and sterilise itself at the touch of a button. The process takes approximately 8 minutes.

During this time all parts of the unit that are in contact with water are electronically heated and the resulting steam cleans the cooler unit efficiently.

On completion of this process, chilled water is immediately available at 6 degrees Celcius.

Due to this state of the art technology no chemicals are required during the sanitisation
cycle.

The latest technological development on from Ice Bank coolers is the Auto-Sanitisation feature, which is unique to Aquarius XI and incorporated into both our Aquarius 4000 and 5000 models

Combined hot and cold units on the market are low rated @ 800 watts and because of this its slow heat up time only enabled hot water to be dispensed at between 89 to 94 degrees, which is not hot enough to brew tea to most clients liking. Although some units can be turned up to dispense at 99 degrees due to the small size of the hot vessel steam builds up and results in "spitting" at the point of dispense and therefore poses a health and safety risk.