When warehouses get hot, work slows down. A person’s body temperature increases, causing their muscles to slow down. Blood pressure drops, fatigue kicks in, and their skin sweats in an attempt to cool the body (more on that in a moment).
For employees, it’s more than a matter of working in uncomfortable conditions. They become physically unable to perform their jobs at a normal pace.
Studies have revealed that for every degree increase in temperature above average, productivity decreases by three percent. So if the mercury hits 82 inside a warehouse, productivity can decrease by as much as 30%. Add that up over weeks and months of hot weather, and it’s easy to see how a company could be losing a huge amount of money.
What can be done? The options vary, and the best solution may surprise you.
Why Warehouses Are Hot and Expensive to Cool
It’s all about airflow.
When a warehouse (or any other large industrial facility) absorbs heat from the weather outside, the heat stays trapped inside. On hot, breezeless days, this means indoor temperatures can soar into the 80s and 90s. Opening doors and windows can help a little if there’s a breeze, but that’s not an option for most buildings.
The obvious solution is to add air-conditioning to the building. But the expense for installing and running AC is exorbitant, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forcing cool air into a warehouse does work—but at a very, very high price.
Time to get back to sweat. When a body sweats, it releases moisture from the skin. When air flows across the skin, the body feels cooler. The room temperature may still be 80 degrees, but the cooling effect from the airflow makes it feel like 72. The body calms down and the brain and muscles are able to do their work again.
The goal to make a warehouse feel cooler is to make the air circulate more consistently and forcefully throughout the room.
About 20 years ago, one company invented a new kind of ceiling fan that could do exactly that. They called them HVLS (high-volume, low-speed) fans, and they worked like a charm. These fans were so HUGE that whenever anyone saw one, they would often say, “Now that’s a big ass fan!”
How to Cool Off a Warehouse with Industrial Fans
When Big Ass Fans was born, it started a sort of revolution in the warehouse industry. Now companies had an affordable solution for keeping their employees feeling cool and staying productive.
These new industrial fans provided a number of advantages over air-conditioning. Their very large size (now available up to 30-feet in diameter) allows them to circulate a massive amount of air to help people feel cooler in even the hottest climates. Their powerful motors were not only extremely energy efficient but were also engineered to run silently for years on end.
The concept is fairly simple, but maximizing the airflow in a large building involves more than installing a giant fan on the ceiling. Big Ass Fans engineers have designed systems and tools that help them determine exactly what it will take to provide airflow to any warehouse or factory floor building and setup. By taking into account a long list of variables—building size and height, machinery, high shelving, even existing HVAC systems—our airflow experts can analyze any space and make a precise recommendation for cooling off a warehouse sufficiently.
Request a Quote for Warehouse Fans
You can take advantage of Big Ass Fans’ smart engineering by getting an analysis of your warehouse space. Every room is different, so it pays to use the right tools and expertise to find out exactly what it will take to keep your employees feeling cool—even in the harshest of conditions.
Request a free quote to discover what an industrial warehouse fan can do for you.
