Jet Air Stream Heat Pumps for Large Industrial Spaces

For most UK businesses, "putting in air conditioning" means a couple of cassettes, a wall-mount or two, and a small unit on the side of the building. Job done in a day, comfort improved, energy bills sensible. For the rest — the warehouses, the fabrication shops, the MOT bays, the distribution centres, the sports halls — none of that works. The ceilings are too high, the volumes are too big, and standard kit can't physically throw air far enough to reach the people who need it. So most of these buildings are still being heated the way they were in 1995: a gas warm-air burner up in the rafters, blowing heat down and hoping for the best. There's a better way. And it's been a long time coming.

Why big spaces have always been hard to heat Spend ten minutes in any high-bay industrial unit on a January morning and you'll see the problem. Warm air rises. In a building with 10 metres to the eaves, you can pump out 192 kW of heat and the bottom three metres, where the people actually are, can still feel cold. Half your gas bill is heating the underside of the roof. Destratification fans help, but they're fighting physics with brute force. Then there's the layout problem. If the shop has an overhead crane (and most fabrication shops do), you can't run high-level ductwork or pipework across the working area. Anything that depends on overhead distribution is off the table before you start. And in summer, a gas warm-air system does precisely nothing. Your team's working in 28°C with no ventilation, productivity drops, and you've got to spec a separate cooling system to deal with it. For decades the answer was just "bigger gas burner." Energy was cheap, carbon wasn't an issue, and nobody asked too many questions. None of those things are true any more.

What's actually changed

Two things, mainly. First, gas isn't cheap and predictable any more. The 2022 price spike taught a lot of UK businesses an expensive lesson about depending on a single fossil fuel for heat. Even after prices settled, the volatility risk hasn't gone away. Electricity has historically risen at a slower rate than gas, and that gap looks set to widen as the grid decarbonises. Second, your customers are starting to care about your carbon footprint. If you supply a big retailer, an automotive OEM, an aerospace tier-one, or any business with a public net-zero target, expect a Scope 3 emissions questionnaire on your desk within the next couple of years. Gas heating is one of the biggest line items on that report. It's also one of the easiest to fix.

A heat pump that can actually heat a factory

The kit catching up to the brief is air-to-air heat pump technology designed specifically for large, high-ceilinged spaces. Panasonic's Jet Air Stream is the one we're specifying most often right now, because it solves the airflow problem properly. Each unit fires conditioned air horizontally through four motorised nozzles, with a throw of up to 30 metres. The nozzles re-aim themselves depending on the season: pointing downward in heating mode (because warm air wants to rise), and spreading across the ceiling in cooling mode (because cool air wants to fall). No ductwork. No trunking over the crane runs. Air gets to where it needs to be. A typical 1,000 m² fabrication shop with 10 m eaves takes about eight units, mounted on opposing eaves columns, with the throws overlapping in the middle. The whole shop gets even coverage. The crane keeps working. Job done.

Speak to us about your AC needs

What it does to the running cost

This is where it stops being a tech story and starts being a business case.

A heat pump running at a heating COP of 3.55 delivers heat at roughly 5.4p per usable kWh.

A gas warm-air system at 80% seasonal efficiency, running on 11p/kWh gas, delivers heat at 13.75p per usable kWh. That's 2.57 times cheaper per useful unit of heat. Every hour the system runs.

For a 192 kW high-bay installation running 1,040 hours of a typical heating season, the saving works out at around £16,749 a year off the running cost versus gas, and 34 tonnes of CO₂ avoided — roughly 75% lower carbon.

Summer cooling is included in the same kit at no extra capital cost. A gas system cannot do that for any money. Throw in the Annual Investment Allowance — heat pumps qualify as plant and machinery, meaning 100% of the capital cost can be written off in year one (subject to your AIA headroom) — and the lifetime numbers tip firmly in favour of electric. Even on projects where gas is cheaper to install on day one.

The pushback

We hear Plenty of business owners are still understandably cautious about heat pumps. The residential market has had a mixed run in the UK press, and that suspicion has carried into the commercial conversation.

We hear three concerns regularly:

• "Won't it be expensive to run on electricity?" - Per kWh of fuel input, yes — electricity is more expensive than gas. Per kWh of usable heat delivered, no. That's what the COP changes, and that's the number that hits your P&L.
• "What about really cold weather?" - Modern commercial units operate down to −20°C ambient. UK design temperature is −5°C. There is plenty of headroom for the worst week of the year.
• "Do they really save what they say they save?" - When designed correctly, yes. When sized to the building rather than to the brochure, and installed by an engineer who knows commercial systems, yes. The 5-year manufacturer parts warranty Panasonic offers through Approved Installers gives both us and you something concrete to stand behind.

Where this works best

Anywhere the eaves are six metres or more and the heating bill is north of £15,000 a year. That covers most fabrication shops, distribution centres, warehouses, MOT and vehicle workshops, sports halls, leisure centres, and large open-plan commercial units. If you're scoping a new build, replacing an end-of-life gas warm-air system, or being asked some uncomfortable questions about supply chain emissions, it's worth a proper conversation. We'll come and look at the building, run the numbers properly, and put a costed comparison on the table. No charge for the visit, and no obligation if the maths doesn't stack up for your particular building.

Call us on 01773 301 300 or Speak to us about your AC needs

*Important Information & Disclaimer
The energy savings and price figures quoted in this article are provided for general information and illustrative purposes only. They are based on specific assumptions regarding energy consumption, building efficiency, and market prices at the time of writing. Actual savings are subject to many factors, including variations in individual usage habits, property type, and future changes to energy tariffs, the Ofgem price cap, or government policy.