Air conditioning
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AHUs as standard? D
elivering air purity and comfort is of the utmost importance for a variety of buildings, particularly within the healthcare and
education sectors. AHUs are arguably the most important part of a ventilation and air conditioning system, as they remove polluted air from indoor spaces and replace it with clean, fresh, and sometimes humidified air, at the right temperature. While many buildings can require designed-to-build solutions, there are numerous similarities which can be drawn between applications, which is where a standard solution can come into play.
A standard solution
Ordinarily, to stand out as a manufacturer in this field, it is important to understand your customer’s needs in order to offer a specialised solution which is flexible for future requirements. However, with benefits such as shorter lead times, predetermined size and performance, repeatability, and ease of maintenance, standardised solutions can be a highly sought after choice for a number of projects. While the Building Services Research and
Information Association’s (BSRIA’s) ‘Airside products’ UK market report notes a slight shift away from the number of standardised products being produced, with an increase in tailored solutions, it also highlights that there are still some sectors of the industry that are requiring more standardised products. These include the education sector and small refurbishment projects.
Short and sweet
With a fixed set of features, standard AHUs can be produced with significantly shorter lead times for customers and delivered to site with ease. They tend to be used in the very early stages of new building projects where the design engineer has outlined the basic requirements for mechanical ventilation in terms of the amount air that needs to be moved and filtered, the floor space available and whether heating capability is required. Therefore, in situations where the specification is more certain or fixed, standard AHUs represent an appealing option.
Repeat yourself
Opting for a standard solution essentially means that one product ordered today will be the same as one ordered tomorrow. The combination of features, performance and footprint are fixed for each size of the product range, making them consistent and
June 2019
ideally suited for locations which require equipment of the same specification, such as schools or office blocks.
Keep it simple
With a standard solution, design engineers are presented with a set of features which meet the general requirements for mechanical ventilation, well ahead of a project taking place. Performance, footprint and pricing information can be easily obtained from a manufacturer’s product brochure ahead of specification with no calculations required, and standard products are often supported by BIM models, making the specification process even simpler. Essentially, before seeing the product delivered to site, you can be confident in it meeting size and performance requirements. From a maintenance perspective, many standard AHUs have integrated controls with a dirty filter and fault signal indicator, allowing for the easy replacement of filters. With components sized according to industry standards, facilities managers can easily obtain replacement components, such as filters, when required, whereas most configured products will contain non-standard components.
The project process
Supply chain management in the construction industry is often a complex process with several parties working together and responsibility for
Final thoughts
Ultimately, whether a unique or standard offering is more suitable depends on the project itself, but there will always be a need for a standard solution when it comes to AHUs. While a designed-to-build AHU is capable of delivering results tailored to site-specific circumstances, standard units can offer a number of benefits from assured performance to repeatability. When it comes to selecting the right AHU for project specification requirements and applications, Elta Fans’ Air Design offers dedicated selection software with pre-configured standard layouts and quick design parameters.
While manufacturers of air handling, heat recovery and energy recovery ventilation products, such as Elta Fans, are well accustomed to creating tailored ventilation products for customers to fulfil any requirement, there has been increased demand for standard products which are equally efficient and
reliable. Ana Cross, associate product manager of air handling systems (UK) at Elta Group, explains the specification process for air handling units (AHUs) and why a standard solution is growing in popularity
various areas of a project spreading across a range of suppliers. Therefore, seeing any project through from design to completion can be a long process, with communication across a number of levels from designer and contractor to procurement. As such, a building’s layout and requirements for air handling can change considerably with some of the key variants being access limitation and reduced floor space once other services begin to be installed and a project’s interior takes form. With the potential for several constraints on site
across the lifetime of a project, the configuration of an AHU may no longer fit a standard design, which is where more tailored one-off designs can offer an alternative solution for contractors. As such, what may start as a standard solution could become non- standard should circumstances dictate it.
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