Since 2001, Washroom Washroom Ltd have become one of the leading providers of high specification washrooms, toilet, and shower cubicles, to the commercial, Health, leisure, education, and public sectors. The company design, manufacture and install these high quality and innovative washrooms from their bespoke joinery, based in Essex.
The brief
Malcolm Reid of Washroom Washroom approached Western Air Ducts late in 2016 with a requirement to reduce the energy consumption across their manufacturing facility. Due to the growth of the company they were reaching the capacity of their electrical supply and needed to find ways to reduce the demand. They had themselves identified that the current dust extraction systems in the two workshops, needed to be changed or modified, to help reduce energy use and avoid the possibility of power shortages across the site.
What we did
Western Air Ducts, carried out site visits and observed the current situation at Washroom Washroom and concluded that the current filter units, fans, and ducting arrangements were adequate for the required levels of extraction. The issue was not to reduce the size of the fans in use but to more effectively control that use. Working practice at Washroom Washroom has always been, as it is with many similar joinery operations, that the extraction system would be switched on in the mornings and left to run at full power all day, regardless of how much it was required. With two fans in full operation, one at 30kwh and the other at 18.5Kwh, this was putting a heavy toll on the sites electrical supply.
Western Air Ducts solution to this problem was to recommend the use of its own innovative Inteliair™ intelligent air control system. Inteliair™ is designed and manufactured by Western Air Ducts as a solution to help reduce operating costs, lower carbon emissions and improve air quality by maximising the efficiency of dust and fume extraction systems. This is achieved by the automatic and continuous monitoring of demand using localised switching that detects when extraction is required.
Inteliair™ has been designed to be simple to retrofit into an existing extraction system, reducing the need for costly and unnecessary changes. This helps lessen the need for manufacturing down time and speed up the installation process. At Washroom Washroom, Inteliair™ was installed with fast operating pneumatic dampers controlled by Inteliair™ damper control units and our own design current sensing switches, these switches detect the change in current when an item of machinery is turned on for use, a signal is then sent to the damper control unit, which opens the pneumatic damper and informs the Inteliair™ main control unit that extraction is required. In turn the main control unit signals a variable speed drive which controls fan speed and ramps the fan up to the required levels. These levels are determined during a thorough commissioning process which involves measuring air flow within the system ducting and at the extraction points to ensure that levels of extraction reach those as set out by COSHH Regulations.
A further advantage for Washroom Washroom in using the Western Air Ducts, Inteliair™ system is that as a Carbon Trust accredited supplier of energy efficient equipment, they could assist in the securing of a 30% grant from the Carbon Trust towards the cost all the work related to the installation. This meant that their initial investment was reduced as well as the payback period for the capital outlay, through a reduction in energy costs, became significantly shorter.
The outcome
“We had a strong requirement to reduce the energy consumption within our workshops to help continue our growth, Western Air Ducts provided a cost-effective solution with Inteliair as it could be retro fitted within the extraction systems we already had bringing down the initial costs, accompanied to that we were able to get a grant through the Carbon Trust who accredit the system which provided an added incentive to get the upgrade done. The install was efficient and the results in the early stages are matching our expectations.”
Malcom Reid Director at Washroom WashroomÂ
