Aurora Pools and Spas, Lexington, Ky.
Posted
09/2/2011
At home in a 23,000-square-foot metal warehouse-style facility,
Aurora Pools and Spas completed an extensive overhaul last year
with an emphasis on both comfort and energy efficiency to curtail
the hot summers and cold winters employees and customers
experienced in the space. Sixty small ceiling fans were replaced
with nine 10-foot-diameter Isis fans from the Big Ass Fan Co. to
help with summer cooling and winter heat destratification.
With 14- to 18-foot-high ceilings, the retail space only has air
conditioning around the register kiosk, providing cooling only to
the workers directly beneath it. According to General Manager Mike
Fossum, the summers are hot due to high temperatures and excessive
humidity, and the existing small ceiling fans were only effective
to those standing directly under them. "It was a metal oven," he
says, "with extreme 100 F days, inside."
During the summer, the Isis fans' patented airfoil design
distributes gentle columns of air over large spaces, creating a
cooling effect and a welcome reprieve from the heat. In the winter,
uneven heat distribution from the two wood-burning stoves left
pockets of 40 to 70 F throughout the space. "We don't have a
heating system in here so we basically just burn those two wood
stoves and with the fans; they just move so much air, it's
transferring to both sides of the store," said Fossum. "We usually
go through five bags of wood pellets a day in the stoves and we've
hardly burned much at all."
In addition to the fan installation, energy efficiency was
achieved with the installation of a new roof, improved ballast
lights-doubling the lighting but cutting the electric bill in
half-and R-27 insulation.
Fans: Big Ass Fan Co., Lexington, www.bigassfans.com
