Every day, customers around the world enjoy the ability to enter their favorite shops, find their preferred products, and go home happy with their purchase. To get to that point, though, requires a massive amount of effort across large supply chains. All that work eventually ends up in one place: the loading dock at your warehouse or place of business. Here, you don’t have to worry about transporting products over long distances anymore. Instead, the focus is on running an efficient operation that controls costs while making products ready for sale.
When trucks arrive to receive or drop off shipments, the staff on duty must open large loading dock doors to gain access to the transport container. This exposure to the outdoors can mean many loading docks are seasonally very hot or very cold, while also allowing climate controlled interior air to rush out. The effect is twofold: the working environment may be uncomfortable, and your facility’s energy usage spikes during truck operations. Both can have costly impacts on your business, reducing productivity and increasing expenditures on electricity.
The loss of energy wastage is not a problem with no viable solution, though it is easy to view it that way. Instead, the installation of air curtains can prove to be a game changer for any business that regularly operates a loading dock. Similar to the hardware you might encounter at the entrance to a grocery store or a restaurant, loading dock air curtains lend their industrial power and heavy-duty reliability to help you save money. Why are they so useful, and how can an operation benefit from them?
What Loading Dock Air Curtains Achieve in Operation
When a loading area’s doors are in the down position, the area can have quite a pleasant atmosphere as it takes advantage of the heating and cooling provided by the building’s systems. When those doors open as trucks arrive, though, it doesn’t take long before all that air has escaped outside, replaced with hot, humid air in the summer or chilly breezes in the winter. Air curtains act as a physical barrier covering the open doors to restrict this process as much as possible.
Using a motor to power an air pump, air curtains suck in ambient air and use special nozzles to project the air downward. These currents rush from the curtain to the floor fast enough to form a continuous stream of air — a “curtain” that prevents almost all mixing. Only at the very bottom of a curtain will some temperature changes occur. With the ability to operate as long as the doors remain open for the truck, this hardware allows facilities managers to gain much greater control over the climate on the loading dock.
Lowering Power Bills and Keeping Staff Comfortable
With air curtains in operation, HVAC systems face reduced demand. Less air loss means that the interior space can retain a stable temperature more efficiently, which in turn means spending less each month keeping the area from reaching extremes. Industrial-strength units intended for loading docks feature durable construction from high-quality materials due to the high level of performance demanded of them throughout their lifespan. That means energy efficiency is a built-in feature, too. The result is that you can more easily save money on energy expenditures. While you already benefit by reducing the need to replace lost air, efficient air curtains ensure that you are not simply shifting the cost from one area to another.
Staff often find working around air curtains to be very beneficial as well. In very hot or very cold loading docks, worker efficiency and productivity can suffer as the weather takes its toll. In the summer, regular air curtains keep staff cool even as they do labor-intensive work, allowing them to take fewer breaks and complete the task with haste. Heated air curtains in the winter ensure that staff do not need to bundle up indoors, either. As an additional benefit, air curtains can help to prevent truck exhaust from entering the building by gently blowing it back outside.
Finding the Appropriate Hardware is a Straightforward Task
So, you’ve decided that these units might be of value to your operation. Now what? Air curtain installation is a typically straightforward task, even for larger areas such as loading docks. According to leading manufacturer Berner, there are even ways to approach securing air curtains to rolling dock doors — allowing all kinds of warehousing setups to enjoy a more stable interior environment when working on trucks. Once you’ve decided to explore options in this area, a reliable partner in the search is crucial.
Air Door Distributors provides a direct connection to industry leading air curtains, allowing your business to take full advantage of their abilities. From boosting employee morale to finding more room in the budget for more mission-critical tasks, enhancing your climate control capabilities with this hardware is a smart choice. For more information on how to size and select air curtains for your operation, or to discuss the purchasing process, please contact us today for prompt, professional help.