Air Curtains For Environmental Separation
Challenge
Cintas is a nationwide leader in preparing businesses to open their doors and operate safely from day one. Supplying workwear and apparel, fire protection, training and compliance, and first aid and safety to businesses across the country, Cintas helps its customers achieve their best every day.
To handle their growing needs, Cintas purchased an existing manufacturing building in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin to retrofit. Due to Cintas’s wide variety of available services, they needed to stop airflow between three major sections of this large space: shipping and receiving docks, industrial cleaning equipment, and office space for Cintas employees.
Additionally, Cintas suffered from problems with air infiltration and environmental separation in their new multi-faceted facility. They simply couldn’t allow gases from cleaning uniforms and mats to infiltrate offices where employees handled scheduling, billing, and customer service concerns. Additionally, they needed to keep flying insects out of areas where substantial industrial dock doors would be open for long periods.
The Solution
To solve the air quality problems fast, Cinta looked to Mars, the worldwide leader in air curtains, to find the solution. Cintas reached out to the local Mars representative, Gunn & Pegelow, who walked the job site over multiple visits with the installing contractor to match the correct air curtains to the unique problems Cinta faced.
After initial assessments, the Gunn & Pegelow rep recommended the popular LPV2 air curtains for Cintas. These offer a sleek, consumer-friendly design with quiet features and variable speed control, making them the perfect fit for a building with so many different uses.
Mars understood that Cintas needed a solution fast, so they prioritized Cintas and delivered 15 LPV2 air curtains to the job site within a month of when they were ordered. And Mars didn’t stop there.
Cintas had questions about the proper placement of the air curtains above door openings and the correct positionings of door switches and control panels. To ensure everything was installed correctly, the local representative from Gunn & Pegelow made regular job site visits to track progress and assess the labor. All post-sale concerns were resolved timely, proving that Mars was the right solution for Cintas’s one-of-a-kind multi-faceted building.
Now that Mars Air curtains are installed, Cintas benefits from increased comfort for workers and guests by minimizing air transfer between interior zones, maintaining building temperature while the large dock doors are open and repelling windborne contaminants, debris and flying insects.
Mars delivered on their slogan that “The Best Air Curtains on Earth Come from Mars.” Allow us to show you the Mars difference.
STUDIES REVEAL A 6%-9% POSITIVE EFFECT ON WORK PERFORMANCE BASED ON IMPROVED AIR QUALITY AND TEMPERATURE. (WYON 2004)
MANAGING WIDE OPEN SPACES
Cavernous manufacturing centers grapple with complexities — numerous staff, high traffic, inconsistent climate control, and ongoing pressure to create productive working environments to hit output goals month after month.In the Campbell Soup Company’s sprawling, 2.4 million-sq.-ft. facility, an array of exterior doors continually introduce outside air into the workspace. Facility managers were using propeller-based fans in an inefficient attempt to barricade the unwanted airflow responsible for drafts and shrinking productivity. The fans were doubly ineffective because they used excessive horsepower to produce a wide flow of unfocused air. The Mars Air Systems air curtain solution was able to produce a precision air barrier with a concentrated blast of air that used only 3 HP versus the old system's 15 HP. Better still, the Mars solution completely eliminated the view obstruction of the fans while consuming the energy equivalent of one standard metal parking light with a 1500-watt metal halide bulb operating for one hour.
ONLY EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMERS INVITED
When you bring in the world’s top entertainment venue designers to build an iconic sports facility valued at $1.1B, filling the 1.75M sq ft structure with premium equipment that performs with the latest technology is the name of the game.U.S. Bank Stadium – home to the Minnesota Vikings football franchise – is big, bold, and best-in-breed. With entry doors that serve as the gateway for tens of thousands daily, they needed the most technologically–advanced way to thwart flying pests and keep climatized air inside and harsh winds outside. Now with 25 sizable Mars air curtains, fans experience a halo of heated air during Minnesota winters and an invisible protective barrier from dust and pests year–round. Down below, the dock doors that service the facility's over 430 food points of sale, have their own protection with a cluster of Mars industrial air curtains, designed for environments that need heavy-duty brawn.
TOO MANY PEOPLE NEED US – IT HAS TO BE RIGHT
When you’re as successful as Westmoreland County Food Bank, you serve 7,200 families a month and operate a 40,000 sq.ft. facility that processes 8.6 million pounds of food a year, - and your food storage equipment needs to work flawlessly.For Westmoreland, facility limitations forced the freezer and evaporator to sit side-by-side, which caused excessive humidity that led to ice and frost on the floor outside the freezer doorway – a safety hazard for both forklifts and workers on foot. When it’s too important or costly to be anything other than right, Mars Air Systems is the team you want on your side. Mars has been repeatedly the source for answers when large industrial and foodservice operators need no-fail solutions to vexing humidity, unwanted condensation, or hazardous pools of water. Deploying air baffles along side the series of air curtains gave the Westmoreland workers the means to ward off the flowing water that had been a source of slippage, falls, and worker injury.
KEEPING WIDE OPENINGS FROM ATTRACTING THE WRONG CROWD
When a popular sports bar in downtown Overland Park, Kansas added a track-guided garage door and a series of fold-out windows along the second-floor dining area to open the space and bring the outdoors in, Johnson County health code regulations threatened to halt the experience enhancing plans. Prohibitions against open exposure to flying pests in food prep and food serving areas were circumvented when Mars Air Systems formed the backbone of a solution to meet regulatory requirements, enhance guest comfort, and cut utility bills. A cleverly-designed exterior- mount solution worked double duty as an architectural mullion as well as supportive ledge to cradle the hardworking air curtain units. A painted protective covering was then custom-made and placed around the units to shield them from the often harsh Midwestern elements, all while blending in with the building and appearing to be part of an intentional facade. Now the threat of flies and mosquitoes has been halted as the air curtains provide the proven invisible protective shield the health code demands. Able to operate continuously whenever the garage door or windows are open and still provide trusted defense, patron experiences are also protected as any drifting cigar or cigarette smoke from guests on the patio is prevented from reaching inside diners.