Warehousing may sound simple, but business owners know that keeping everything running smoothly can present major challenges. Maximizing efficiency, keeping costs down and properly managing day-to-day issues are important logistical obstacles that must be overcome.
Fortunately, there are ways for business owners to address all of these issues at once, and the way to get there is deceptively simple: improved ventilation!
At first glance, ventilation might not seem like an obvious tool. However, positive impacts can be made through improved ventilation, impacting the regular operations of a warehouse business in many ways.This is especially true of HVLS fans, which stands for high-volume, low-speed.
High Volume, Low Speed, Big Benefits
The benefits of HVLS fans, sometimes referred to as industrial ceiling fans, are numerous and easily applicable. Improved ventilation helps warehousing operations of all sizes in several ways by:
- Safeguarding employee health
- Protecting inventory
- Preventing moisture buildup
- Saving energy
These benefits are not strictly limited to warehouses – the same is true for machine shops, airplane hangars, manufacturing plants, storage depots, greenhouses, and hundreds of other industrial buildings and industries.
Employee Health
A healthy workforce is important for businesses in any sector. For warehouses, employee health and well-being is absolutely essential. The challenging work and long hours can take a toll on your workers, which is why paying close attention to their working conditions can pay huge dividends.
Most warehouses are not air conditioned, and soaring summer temperatures can put workers at serious risk for heat stroke. Keeping your warehouse well ventilated with high-volume, low-speed (HVLS) fans can greatly reduce heat stress and help improve employee productivity as well.
On the other hand, In the winter HVLS fans help circulate heated air evenly throughout the building. This process is called destratification, and it can help keep your staff warm, dry and comfortable when the temperature drops outside while also lowering heating costs. It’s a win-win!
Inventory
Keeping the air moving within a warehouse is critical to ensuring the safety of products for human consumption. Restaurants and grocery stores alike rely on warehouses for the steady supply of goods, and keeping those customers satisfied is a must for any warehousing or distribution business. Temperature-controlled warehousing must keep the indoor climate within a certain range to maintain ideal product shelf life and prevent spoilage.
HVLS fans are key to keeping warehouses well ventilated, which makes it easier to maintain a consistent temperature in the facility. For both refrigerated and temperature-controlled warehouses, preventing or significantly limiting product loss keeps profit margins intact.
Temperature-controlled warehousing is ideal for products that may not require refrigeration, but are still sensitive to fluctuating temperatures and/or require a certain temperature range. For temperature-sensitive products, exposure to extreme temperatures may result in reduced shelf life, spoilage, or permanent damage.
HVLS fans not only help regulate a consistent indoor environment, but they do it while lowering costs, allowing you to spread the load and not rely solely on your HVAC system infrastructure to regulate the temperature indoors.
Moisture Buildup
Humidity can wreak havoc on a warehouse if left unchecked.
High humidity can lead to moisture buildup, which cause foul odours, mould accumulation and other problems. These issues can lead to damaged inventory, equipment maintenance issues, and put the health of your staff at risk.
By installing HVLS fans in your warehouse, you can make sure that there is a uniform flow of air throughout your facility, which will help regulate humidity levels and improve air quality. Instead of being forced to come up with and pay for a dehumidification strategy to regulate the huge volume of air in your warehouse, a solution that can be prohibitively expensive, HVLS fans act as a low-cost solution and produce the same results.
Energy
The realm of energy savings is the most direct way you can measure the positive impact of HVLS fans in your facility. The cost of heating and cooling a warehouse are major expenses, and can have a major impact on the profitability of your business.
Properly managing these costs is important for not only your bottom line, but also to reduce your company’s carbon footprint. By reducing energy needs, your facility can be part of the green building movement and help safeguard the environment all while saving you money, which is something any company can be proud of.
Instead of pumping heat into every square inch of your facility, an expensive proposition, HVLS fans help regulate temperatures throughout an entire facility by evenly distributing the heat which tends to accumulate near the ceiling.
Buildings with palletized storage or racking stand to benefit the most from HVLS fans because traditional exhaust fans and HVAC systems struggle in these environments. Even if your warehouse already has high-quality heating and cooling, HVLS can save your business money by reducing the operational costs of these systems.
HVLS Fans – An Affordable Solution
For a warehouse of any size, HVLS fans can address several issues at once. A smooth, steady flow of air will help keep workers comfortable, prevent product loss, eliminate moisture buildup and reduce energy costs, all while reducing your operational costs.
Best of all, HVLS fans have become so affordable that they practically pay for themselves. As countless businesses have already found out, the savings offered by reduced energy costs and product loss combined with the increased productivity of a comfortable workforce makes a huge difference to the bottom line over time.
And that difference is more than enough to pay for the installation of high-quality, HVLS fans.
Do you want to learn more about how an HVLS fan (or fans) can impact your organization? Talk to an expert you can trust to get an idea about just how much you might save per year – you won’t regret it!
