Tag: louvers

Function and Aesthetics for Educational Facilities

Educational facilities are currently the largest construction segment in the USA. An extremely important part of a working K12 school or College building is its air quality for occupants. Educational buildings see large volumes of people passing through and need to cater for ventilation rates and indoor air quality. Quoting the EPA studies show that one half of the USA’s 115,000 schools have problems with their indoor air quality. It is proven that health and comfort levels of educators and students is linked to air quality. As manufacturers of air movement/quality products, it is our responsibility to insure we meet the needs of students and staff alike by providing them with the highest quality equipment to facilitate clean and healthy air.

It gives me great pleasure when I see our brands such as Reliable Louvers contributing to making a school not only function efficiently for air intake and exhaust with its external louvers, but visually enhance the overall appearance of the buildings through efficient screening. Reliable’s products are designed to absolute and custom specifications. This is backed by highly experienced Engineers and professional staff, which reflect commitment to high-quality product standards. The job above in its planning stages was said to be an impossible task on the louver side, but Reliable met that challenge and surpassed it as it always does!

Hands-on Ruskin® Product Training with Mussun Sales, Inc. Cleveland, Ohio

Hands-on training experience can greatly complement other training mediums. Mussun Sales Inc. founded in 1951, representing Ruskin® from Cleveland Ohio, have a 50,000 square foot facility incorporating offices, a warehouse and an up to date Learning Center.  Here within their comprehensive training and application lunch and learn sessions, they bring contractors and engineers up to speed on Ruskin® mechanical and architectural solutions. They show the right products for the right application and correct installation methods.

The Mussun team demonstrate Fire Dampers, Fire/Smoke Dampers and Ceiling Fire Dampers such as a correctly installed UL-approved CFDR7T in a typical arrangement with a suspended ceiling. They are also currently working on setting up a rig for the new Ruskin®  TDP05K Thermal Dispersion Air Measuring Probe.

Mussun takes the lead and shows how important it is to see products installed as they would be within an actual real-world field environment and assist contractors and engineers understand them better.

To take advantage of Mussun Sales product training contact Joe Mantey, jmantey@mussun.com or cleveland@mussun.com

Aloha from Ruskin at SMACNA’s Annual Convention in Hawaii

This week Ruskin® attended SMACNA’s 74th Annual Convention in Maui, Hawaii. Ruskin® successfully exhibited at SMACNA’s product show in nearby Wailea, which observed over 1400 attendees. The whole team thoroughly enjoyed the event and the “show went on” during an island-wide power outage, caused by unusual lightning storms. The team embraced the power cut discussing the latest Ruskin® dampers and duct work air measuring devices with visitors.

Ruskin® demonstrated Damper models, which provide superior air control, high performance, and sustainable energy efficiency, such as the Model ABD (Automatic Balancing Damper). Life Safety, UL rated dampers shown will protect life and mitigate property loss during a life safety event. Air Measuring Solutions included the model TDP05K that incorporates thermal dispersion technology with microprocessor based controls to communicate with any building automation system.

Ruskin® Attends Florida Healthcare Engineering Association Trade Show

This week the Ruskin® team attended the FHEA (Florida Healthcare Engineering Association), Trade Show. The goal of the FHEA is to advance the development of healthcare engineering through effective communication, educational opportunities and establishment of professional standards.

Ruskin® was showing off some of its dampers and louvers suitable for Florida Healthcare construction projects. Peter Blaha, Ruskin® Product Marketing Manager demonstrated some of Ruskin’s Louvers that have a Miami Dade Notice of acceptance, which is a state approval of products related to structural wind resistance of buildings. Ruskin’s Hurricane and Wind-Driven Rain Louvers hold up under pressure in severe weather events by preventing and minimizing wind and rain damage. Ruskin® Louvers were actually the FIRST louvers in the industry to gain approval in Miami-Dade County and continue to meet customers’ needs and requirements!

Watch a YouTube video of the show

Protection from the unknown

We have all seen the images on the news of the destruction in Florida left behind by Hurricane Irma. This immense storm left after passing through, damage and flooding across the board with ten million residents without power. Perhaps the most frightening part of extreme weather and a storm like Irma is the unpredictable nature, about when it will occur and how severe the damage caused will be. People were torn between leaving their properties and places of business and even after government warnings some of them still stayed behind facing the unknown.

Engineers and architects know that the best approach to attacking an extreme situation is to prepare for all the risk factors, meaning designing buildings that can withstand high winds, impact, and other known extreme conditions.

Ruskin’s louver and damper products are designed and tested for extreme weather conditions and critical applications. Ruskin “Extreme Performance” Louvers and Dampers are recommended to meet or surpass requirements of severe weather conditions, and code requirements, such as the Florida Building Code, Texas Department Insurance, and Miami-Dade County approval. In fact, Ruskin’s louvers were the first in the industry to gain Miami-Dade County approval. The overall goal is to stop wind-driven rain and wind-borne debris from entering buildings while protecting critical facilities and paramount protecting life.

The Benefits of Sunshades

As you can see by the pictures above, when a designer or architect uses Sunshades (or Brise-soleil as they say in Europe) as part of a building’s design it can dramatically improve the exterior aesthetics of that building.

In addition to making the building look great, designers know how to also reduce energy usage of HVAC cooling units by applying best practices for passive sunlight control to help reduce glare and solar heat gain through glazing. This all reduces cooling energy load, and saves on building energy usage, a facility manager’s dream! With additional natural lighting benefits, this ultimately contributes to our main objective today, creating energy efficient buildings.

Taking the energy savings into consideration sunshades are a great way to accumulate LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) points for a project through the USGBC (United States Green Building Council). Sunshades tick the boxes for optimizing energy performance, using recycled content, regional content, daylight, and views. Sunshades can also be made to conform with ASHRAE 189.1, section 8.4.1/8.5.1 where shading with louvers and sunshades is detailed.

There are many varieties of sunshades which can be mounted both horizontally and vertically, as well as paint finishes to compliment any building’s appearance.  The use of factory supplied assembled, painted or in-house anodized sections assure that the submitted design is adhered to and meets local code requirements.

To learn a more about sunshades click here.

Growth of Data Centers in North America

As US businesses expand, strategic location and storage must be considered over storage and interaction with their data. Today data centers are allowing businesses to relocate their data rather than having resource consuming servers on site. Gone are the days where companies had their systems in an over-sized closet on site with the air-conditioning running on maximum.

In turning to these cloud solutions the business will enjoy better data bandwidth, avoid regulation and compliance issues and save huge amounts of money on maintenance, running costs and even space. Data center running costs include the power consumption and maintenance of HVAC equipment. It is important to manage and keep outside air flowing efficiently and safely in and out of a data center environment to reduce energy loads. Hyper scaled cloud server facilities have made a complex science out of increasing data center efficiencies to bring down HVAC energy usage down as much as possible.

Next to the actual server systems used, cooling and air movement systems consume the most energy within the data center. Data centers are estimated at consuming at least as much as 1.8% of the USA’s electricity usage calculated at over 70 billion kilowatt-hours. Demands on these systems have increased substantially in recent years as server densities continue to rise.

Ruskin® has been out front and anticipating the trends to data center cooling and providing equipment to help solve customer challenges. Equipment that takes into consideration more economical cooling solutions as well as protection against the elements for data centers. In an independent study, the use of Airside Economizers reduced the energy use by as much as 13%!

In order to protect vital data center generators from overheating and causing a potential shut down, compromising critical information, a Ruskin CD50, CD60, and TED50 have all been used, which open quickly and allow for proper exhaust functionality.

In critical environments, the thermal-efficient TED50CE eliminates thermal transfer and the potential for condensation. The damper also meets the IECC, features the same non-corrosive bearings and shake-proof linkage as the CD50CE and includes twin seals to ensure no thermal path. Both of these dampers are low leakage, low maintenance, AMCA licensed to Class 1A and offer quieter performance to the data center facility manager.

Ruskin louvers and FEMA rated grilles, the HZ850, the EME720, and the XP500S also will protect your data center, as well as allow air flow in and out of the facility in areas that are prone to extreme weather conditions meeting AMCA 540 and AMCA 550 requirements.

Recognizing and serving customer needs through product development

Advances within the HVAC and Ventilation industry have to strongly rely on innovation in product development. The goal of new product development is ultimately recognizing, understanding and serving customer needs. If a new product cannot meet customer needs it will fail in the marketplace.

Focusing on product development is one of our proactive strategies and one where we continuously innovate and adapt on a daily basis. Knowledge of industry trends and technology helps evolve products. We rely on the input from ‘industry intelligent’ individuals to deliver valuable insights to support our offerings. The technology, knowledge, and adaptiveness of our company and staff allow us to satisfy industry test standards and customer requirements.

The forward innovations behind some of the recent products such as the EME720 louver and the corrosion resistant dampers were driven by our customer needs. Boundaries were pushed to provide products that meet or exceed that same customer’s needs and expectations. The technology behind these new products are intended to save customers money as well as provide increased durability and functionality they will not find anywhere else on the market.