Maumee Stamping & Assembly Facility HVAC Success Story

Learn How HTHV Technology Helped Breathe New Life Into an Abandoned Building

 

For many years, the Ford stamping plant in Maumee, Ohio was a thriving facility that employed over 1,500 people before it unfortunately closed its doors in 2007. As the largest employer in the city of Maumee, the facility was a tremendous loss when the factory was shuttered. In 2010, the Chlebowski family had a noble idea of re-opening the 800,000 s/f facility to bring those lost jobs back to the community. To make this work, the new ownership needed to reduce operating costs to make re-opening the facility a reality. As Travis Barta, Vice President of Operations at Maumee Stamping & Assembly, stated, “We had to be able to operate smart and efficiently.”

 

Problem:

To accomplish this daunting task, they knew operating smart and efficiently meant they would have to address the major consumers of energy they inherited from the old plant – namely the facility HVAC and lighting. To achieve their goals, a team was put in place to assist Maumee Stamping and Assembly with their ambitious lighting and HVAC retrofit project. Two of the major partners, MDA Engineering and Commercial Comfort Systems, were instrumental in achieving the energy reductions that would lead to the facility’s operating cost reduction goals.

 

Solution:

The first step to make the Maumee facility HVAC more energy efficient was for MDA Engineering to conduct an ASHRAE level 2 audit. From the audit, it was clear one of the biggest problems was the old twenty-million Btu boilers used to heat the facility – two to be exact. These old, inefficient boilers were wasting a tremendous amount of energy. Commercial Comfort Systems recommended replacing the boilers with energy efficient High Temperature Heating and Ventilation (HTHV) technology. The new HTHV units would provide better control for heating the facility at a lower operating cost.

As Travis Barta stated, “Before we replaced the boilers, we had little control over our temperature within the facility. On colder Ohio winter days, we would struggle to heat the facility. And, when the inside temperature would warm up, as it often did, we would have to open the doors to let the hot air escape to the outside because we couldn’t turn the boilers down. We were just letting wasted energy go right out the door.”

Commercial Comfort replaced the old boilers with (9) S-2200 Cambridge HTHV units. Now, Maumee Stamping and Assembly has the ability to easily control the temperatures within the facility. This is due to the higher discharge temperature and the inherent destratification properties of HTHV, providing their associates with a comfortable working environment through their new facility HVAC system. Because the HTHV units are a 100% outside air technology, the associates enjoy excellent and safe IAQ. And, as Fran from Commercial Comfort said, “The roof top units were easy to install without any damage to the new roof that Maumee Stamping & Assembly had also completed as part of the energy reduction retrofit project.”

 

Result:

Since installing the HTHV units, Maumee Stamping & Assembly has been able to reduce their natural gas usage required to heat their facility. In addition to the energy savings Maumee Stamping & Assembly has realized, they no longer need to have 24x7x365 boiler maintenance personnel onsite to run, repair and inspect the boilers which was required before the HTHV  products were installed. This alone helped to reduce the building operating costs associated with the old boilers.

The MAS facility now employees 225 associates, and they hope to add an additional 50 associates in the future. This facility HVAC project was also the largest PACE project to date in the state of Ohio.

 

What Are the Benefits of HTHV?

• Improved air temperature uniformity due to superior destratification without supplemental fans
• Improved indoor air quality due to use of 100% outside air
• 92% ultra-high efficiency resulting in energy savings and better indoor comfort

 

The Cambridge S-Series

Cambridge’s S-Series facility heating system retrofit was the best solution for Maumee Stamping & Assembly.  It is an energy-efficient, large industrial space heater that is designed to help meet the heating and air load requirements of large facilities, eliminating higher ceiling temperatures and uncomfortable drafts. Make the choice to create a better working environment for your employees and improve the IAQ of your building with Cambridge’s facility HVAC solutions.

 

Facility HVAC for Manufacturers

Cambridge’s manufacturing facility HVAC solutions address the specific requirements of factory heating. These high-bay facilities require heating systems with different specifications and thus require a different combination of products to achieve optimal Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and temperature needs. Discover our unique heating, make-up air ventilation and cooling solutions for manufacturing facilities.