A cooling solution you can look up to
Cleveland Brothers Cat calls on TCRS to solve the warehouse cooling issue.
Perhaps the biggest advantage that TCRS brings to our customers is our relationship and association with the Cat Rental Power Network—the specialized Caterpillar dealers t act as the service arm of our organization nationwide. This relationship is a two-way street, as we are also routinely asked to provide our expertise and assets to help solve their own customers’ issues when it comes to heating, cooling, and dehumidification.
Take, for example, Cleveland Brothers Cat, based in Pittsburgh, PA. One of their clients was a company that owned and operated a large number of perishable goods.
The problem was the warehouse in question—750,000 sq. ft. of lightly insulated metal—was only designed to be heated through long, Pittsburgh winters, but not cool in the summer—which can routinely hit temps of 90°F. In order to keep the integrity of the product, the warehouse needed to be maintained at 70°F and 50% relative humidity within a tolerance of +/-4 degrees Fahrenheit and 5% relative humidity in the spring, summer, and early fall.
The operators of the warehouse had two choices: 1. Install expensive and permanent cooling equipment to maintain the cool temps required for storage or 2. Work with a provider that could develop a way to cool the warehouse on a temporary basis, and keep it operational during the installation.
Option one was no good, as it would most certainly eat into any profits earned from the 5-year storage contract. Option two presented challenges as well because the temporary equipment needed to cool the building would most certainly eat up valuable exterior real estate and crowd loading docks needed to safely move the truck and tow motors in, out, and around the warehouse facility.
Because the warehouse operator had an existing relationship with Cleveland Brothers, and we have a relationship with them, TCRS was bought in to consult on the project. which we think yielded an ‘elevated’ solution.
In response to the need to not disrupt operations and keep the operations clear of obstruction, we made the suggestion to utilize something that the warehouse had plenty of—rack storage—to stage temporary cooling equipment. Half of the building was 20’ high and the other half was 50’ high with pallet racking to the ceiling throughout. Our solution consisted of staging 11 air handlers off the ground and on racks throughout the facility that were hard piped to a 100-ton water chiller outside of the facility, minimizing the interior and exterior footprint.
With this solution, the Cleveland Brothers warehouse customer was able to maintain a tight, two-degree difference in temperature throughout the entire warehouse without obstructing a single loading dock.