Washroom Washroom have been leading providers of highly specified washrooms, toilet and shower cubicles, to the public, commercial, education, health and leisure sectors since 2001. Based in from their bespoke joinery in Essex, Washroom Washroom, design manufacture and install their innovative products. 
As capacity and demand for their products grew Washroom Washroom, has expanded and increased capacity at their workshops. Reaching the point where power supply was being out stripped by demand due to the installation of new and higher spec machinery installed to help satisfy their growing customer base. Resulting in increasing down time due to power cuts. This left the company with the possibility of having the costly and disruptive exercise of finding and moving to a new manufacturing facility.
Washroom Washroom knew that they either faced the upheaval of a move, interrupting their ability to continue providing a great service to the customers, or find an alternative way of reducing the demands on the power supply. To this end the company enlisted the help of the Carbon Trust to survey the energy usage on the site and make recommendations accordingly. The Carbon Trust investigated many options but highlighted that the two dust extraction systems on site, where being inefficiently utilised leading to a constantly high demand on the electrical supply. At 18.5Kwh and 30Kwh the extraction fans where being switched on in the mornings and then left to run at full power all day, regardless of how many joinery machines were being used at any one time; a common practice across most of the joinery industry.
As an accredited supplier of The Carbon Trust, Western Air ducts where contacted to offer advice to resolve this problem. As manufacturers, suppliers and installers of dust and fume extraction systems for more than forty years, Western Air Ducts has developed an innovative solution to the issue of expensive extraction equipment being left to run regardless of demand. The Inteliair® Intelligent Air Control System, is designed to help reduce operating costs, lower carbon emissions and improve air quality. Inteliair® automatically and continuously monitors the demands on any given extraction system using localised switching.
In the case of Washroom Washroom, Inteliair® was retrofitted into the two existing extraction systems, reducing the need to make costly changes to the existing infrastructure. This approach cuts, down time for the joinery to a minimum, thus making little impact on production capabilities. Fast acting pneumatic dampers where introduced into the system to remove the reliance on operators controlling the air flow. These dampers are opened and closed by a Damper Control Unit, which receives a signal for demand from a Current Sensing Switch that detects the power increase in machinery as it is being used. The Damper Control Unit, then sends a signal to a Main Control Unit, which operates a Variable Speed Drive and increases or decreases fan speeds accordingly to only provide the required rate of extraction needed for the number of machines in use at any one time. Extraction rates are set to meet the required levels as set out in COSHH regulations, during a comprehensive commissioning of the system, where Air flows and extraction rates are recorded and the Inteliair® system parameters are set accordingly.
The advantages of using the Inteliair® System for Washroom Washroom has been a decrease in demand upon their electrical supply, which has cut electricity costs through lower usage and eliminated the issue of power outages due to over demand. An Added incentive being that as an accredited supplier of The Carbon Trust, Western Air Ducts where able to help Washroom Washroom receive a grant from the trust towards the capital costs of installing this energy saving equipment, that also helps reduce the carbon emissions of the joinery.