Best Practices

Best practices in uderfloor heating systems is using somebody that you trust and has experience and a good track record. If your floor heaves, it will be expensive to fix and can ruin or stop your business. Getting a good system installed correctly at the initial time of construction is critical.

Customers should expect a good quality product, and a system that runs the way it was designed to and as needed to keep the floor from heaving, but not run so much that you waste your money on electric bills. Aside from that good customer service, ease of installation, and ease of replacement should all be best practices you should expect from your vendor.

Customers should ask more about how the floor is being monitored and whether they can get an early warning if there is a problem downthere. Your system should be monitoring soil in different areas using a layoutor grid of thermometers.

There are a lot of options for monitoring, depending on how sophisticated the client wants to get. They range from sight glass on fluid lines that show flow and thermometer readings, which are checked daily becomputerized systems which log keeping and alert mechanisms that monitor temperatures going in and out of locations in the soil.

On electric systems, at a minimum, we specify a simple audible and visual indicator be installed so that a staff member is alerted should a circuit fail for any reason or if someone shuts off the circuit breaker.

You want an early warning so you can take action well before an issue develops into floor heaving, which can eventually lead to a shut down of part or all of your freezer. There is always a solution in the event that something goes wrong and the earlier you find out, the fewer headaches, down time, and cost will be incurred.

Plants that use ammonia refrigeration typically have an engineer operator on staff and will have a good maintenance program. But for PRW’s without full time refrigeration staff, protocols on monitoring the underfloor system need to be written out and an employee needs to be designated to check on the system at least monthly.

New trends

A trend in our industry is that docks are getting bigger because they are being used to stage, sort and load product, and owners are also running docks at colder temperatures. In addition docks originally designed for 40 degree temperatures are starting to be run as freezers. In the last five years, cold dock floors have started freezing and heaving and we will start seeing a trend of putting underfloor heating and floor insulation in colddocks.

In conclusion “ice is your buildings worst enemy so choose the best system to protect your most expensive asset-your building”.

[ΠΗΓΗ:COLD FACTS MAGAZINE]