Journal Prihoda

Builders Express, Margate , South Africa

Builders Express is part of a chain of stores called “Builders Warehouse”, which has branches all over southern Africa (not only in South Africa) and is probably the largest chain of commercial home improvement stores locally. The project originally started off as a galvanised duct system and Emair, our South African distributor, managed to convince the consultants, WILLPOWERWORKS, who do turnkey projects, of the suitability of our fabric ducts based on the properties of the ducts – that they would not rust, the weight is very light, there is no need for insulation, no need for additional grilles and they could be installed in a reasonably quick period of time when compared to galvanised ducting. They offered our design services, knowledge and backup with the use of our products. The airflow for the system is 26,000 m3/h and is fed from 2 package units producing 410 Pa (unfortunately units were pre-ordered for galvanised ducting hence the high static). The store is in a hot tropical location and the ducts are used for cooling purposes only, air distribution was done using perforations and micro perforations with terminal velocities between 0.25 and 0.4 m/s depending on the delta ’T’ difference. The ducting is installed 5 m above the floor and the installation was done by a local HVAC company called EXTRA AIR. The client is happy with the performance and since then we have completed another order for the same chain in Richards Bay.