Applied Air - It is not sustainable if it is not maintainable…or if it breaks down

The first cost of HVAC equipment is usually a tiny fraction of the life cycle cost of the equipment from an operations and maintenance perspective. True sustainable design should also imply that the original performance of the equipment can also be sustained over the life of the equipment. The only ways to do that is start with quality and then take the steps necessary to keep the equipment running properly.
Products designed and built by Mestex, the Dallas Mestek facility, have a history of quality that is difficult to match in the industry. Warranty costs across all of the products built here have consistently been less than 00.75% of sales. The reasons are many:
o 3D integrated design and the specification of components that may not be the least expensive but are the least likely to fail in the field
o Laser alignment of shafts and bearings
o Laser alignment of sheaves
o Balancing of rotating assemblies…not just individual components
o Pressure testing of every coil at up to 5 times its rated operating pressure
o Use of high-silver-content solder for brazed joints
o Run testing of every unit prior to shipping with up to 150 test points performed and logged by unit serial number…and signed by the tester
After the equipment leaves Dallas owners will find a nationwide network of service contractors who have been factory trained on Dallas products. Simple things like hinged access to all critical components is standard to simplify maintenance because the Dallas technical service team is part of the product design team. In most cases the equipment will also be equipped with an industry standard Direct Digital Control system that can communicate with the Building Automation System and is constantly monitoring key unit operating characteristics. The DDC software is factory loaded with dozens of messages that inform the facility staff of alarms, maintenance items, or operating parameters…combined with an extensive Owners Manual that ships with each unit the equipment is designed to make it easy to sustain proper operation of the equipment long after the original contractor leaves the job.
Mestex can even take sustainability a step further by performing Computational Fluid Dynamic analysis during the building design stage in order to help the owner find the equipment layout that will best sustain the temperature conditions for the intended building use.