JE Shekell was asked to quote 4 ground mounted air handlers rated at 100,000 cfm each with duct running throughout the plant to discharge fresh air in 18 places. Also to install a motor control center to run these 4 fans. Schott Gemtron’s goals were to reduce the negative air pressure in the plant and to provide ventilation air for the in plant equipment and employees. There are 4 ovens that run the length of this room where they make the glass tops for quite a few manufacturers of electric kitchen stoves. (Look in the corner of your stove at home it may say “Schott” in one corner)

The heat build up in this area is tremendous. The guys working on this job at ceiling level recorded temperatures of 130 deg F.

After analyzing their scope of work and visiting the job site JE Shekell Engineer, Aaron Derr and Project Manager, Mark Unfried decided that this was not the proper way to introduce fresh air in this space. Duct would be hard to get in due to space restrictions and the total horsepower for the 4 air handlers would be about 400 hp. (Requires quite a bit of power to run these) Aaron came up with the idea to supply 18 separate rooftop mounted supply fans.

What did this accomplish?

We were able to reduced the horsepower requirements from 400 HP (original job scope) to 90 HP total (J.E. Shekell’s new job scope). Quite an energy savings! Plus we gave them operational costs of each scope to show how much they would save with our plan. In addition we did not use up valuable space with the original job scope of large duct running down each aisle.

This is one instance that we did not listen to our customer and bid it the way they proposed. Two other companies bid it as requested of them and came in around $500,000. By presenting this job scope and budget pricing, we were successful in reducing the project cost by over $250,000 while dramatically increasing their energy savings.