Garage door industry magazine for garage door dealers, garage door manufacturers, garage door distributors, garage door installers, loading docks, garage door operators and openers, gates, and tools for the door industry.
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DEALERSCORNER (continued from page 72) The result of the air curtain installation has reduced the 8-degree freezer temperature fl uctuation to less than 2-degrees. Subsequently, ice maintenance costs have been signifi cantly reduced and the potential for slippery fl oors has been eliminated. One option Fairborn offered was a full perimeter door that re-circulates air horizontally. At a price of more than $30,000 however, the full perimeter door was a cost-prohibitive retrofi t. A more economical and equally functional option was a Berner 12-foot- wide, two-speed, 2,304-cfm Model VSB air curtain mounted above the doorway at one-fi fth the cost. Like the full perimeter re-circulating air doorway, an air curtain is up to 80-percent effi cient at separating two environments. Additionally, an air curtain and a rollup door combination--the latter which the client already had already purchased and installed--is a proven effective solution to energy losses in cold storage freezer applications. Custom Engineering a Solution To eliminate the need to cantilever the air curtain away from the high speed door mechanism, Berner recommendation was to install the air curtain vertically. Because the unit was originally designed for horizontal mounting, Berner's engineering department modifi ed the air discharge nozzles to produce a thinner, higher velocity air stream, so that the air curtain reaches the volume, velocity and uniformity required to seal a doorway. The modifi cation helps minimize doorway air balance issues between adjoining rooms with signifi cant temperature differentials that are inherent in cold storage facilities. "We sell and install 10 to 20 air curtains annually, but this is the fi rst time we've installed a vertical mounting," said Hare. The freezer door activation is now executed with the following sequence: • A Falcon motion sensor, manufactured by BEA, detects an oncoming forklift and activates the air curtain, which needs one second to ramp up to full air velocity. • A second Falcon sensor activates the rollup door, which opens after the air curtain is at full velocity. • After the forklift passes through, the door closes and the air curtain shuts off one second later. VOLUME 45 ISSUE 4 2012 77 Most importantly, Fairborn is realizing an energy and maintenance cost reduction of thousands of dollars per month. Managing better environmental separation at the freezer entry has also prolonged refrigeration equipment lifecycles by cutting back on operational wear-and-tear. The cost of the project is equally impressive for the client because the payback on the air curtain is less than one year, according to Hare. Photos courtesy of Berner International air curtains, New Castle, Pennsylvania