More and more high-tech industries are now demanding stable, year-round atmospheric conditions to maintain optimum quality standards and working conditions in their facilities. Constant temperatures not only have the benefit of ensuring consistent production quality, but it also keeps your staff healthy, safe and happy. All of these factors are key to creating and maintaining a successful business.
Colt’s team of experts pioneered factory and warehouse climate control in the early 1930’s with the specific aim of improving employee well-being and productivity in these building types. Since then, our expertise and experience has been proven time and time again, with some of the world’s largest businesses trusting our integrated solutions to improve their reputations with both staff and clients. Colt has worked with a vast array of businesses, across a wide range of industries to create custom solutions that help them maintain superior production quality standards.
Dealing in advanced composite production, maintaining constant air temperatures is vital for Airbus’ Flintshire factory. The £400m project, based in Broughton covers a massive 46,000 sq metres and is dedicated to the production of the carbon fibre wings for Airbus’ new A350.
Airbus turned to Colt to provide a solution. We were asked to provide a climate control system to the new single-story factory that would provide a suitable, unchanging working environment throughout the year. After doing a thorough building survey and carefully reviewing all the possible solutions, Colt provided and installed a multi zone system including inlet and extract ventilation. The system comprises over 100 different natural ventilators (Seefire, WCO and FCO) which were installed in both the roof and walls of the building. To regulate the internal temperature effectively these units are controlled by ten separate thermostats around the building that enable the system to automatically open and close the vents in order to maintain a steady temperature at working level.
In another example that required Colt’s unrivalled experience and expertise, Alcoa – a global supplier of aluminium – turned to Colt after a disastrous fire damaged the roof of their smelting shed in Birmingham beyond repair. It was afterwards determined that the fire was started when an overheated gantry crane caught fire and the blaze got out of control.
As part of the roof’s replacement, Colt was asked to carefully survey the shed and design a ventilation system that would cope with and control the extremely high heat loads generated by the smelting process. A similar situation simply could not arise again – the ventilation system would not only have to be highly effective, but incredibly durable and hardwearing. To fully understand the exact strain the system would have to cope with, Colt used temperature data-loggers to constantly monitor conditions at the gantry cranes. This allowed us to design a system guaranteed to be effective and safe.
The chosen system comprises Colt Labyrinth and Seefire natural ventilators. As well as being highly effective, Natural ventilators are low energy products and so reduce running costs dramatically when compared with mechanical ventilators. They also require very little maintenance.
The Labyrinth ventilators were pre-fabricated at our factory in Hampshire, making the installation quicker and allowing Colt to have full control over the final quality of the installed product.
As one of the UK’s leading chemist chains, Day Lewis Ltd. had another challenging project for Colt to undertake. When it comes to maintaining constant temperatures in their storage facilities, it is absolutely crucial that Day Lewis’ get it right – their stock compromises such valuable items as life-saving medicines that need to be kept at the right temperatures, year-round.
Colt rose to the challenge and designed and provided a complete heating scheme design based on an internal temperature of 18°C against an external of -4°C. Consequently, the system was designed on the basis of providing a total heat input of 343 kW to achieve these conditions.
Due to the layout of the area, which is partly full height and partly has a mezzanine floor, Colt provided a total of 9 Convair suspended gas-fired warm air heaters. Two of these units provide heated air to the area underneath the mezzanine floor via ductwork. All heaters include individual control via thermostat and timer.
In addition, Colt installed a Wastemaster system that returns warm air to low level for heat exchange before it is allowed to leak to the atmosphere. This system reduces the heat input by up to 15-30%, therefore saving heating costs.
The above are just some examples of how Colt’s climate control experts have helped businesses achieve and maintain constant, sustainable control of the temperatures in their production facilities.
Colt can do the same for you. Get in touch with our nationwide team of experts to arrange a free, no obligation building survey. Contact us.
