Portable air conditioner manufacturer, Koldwave, launched a new website that provides easy access to application information, product information, literature and product support.

“We wanted to give our customers a website that was easy to use,” says Koldwave national sales manager Jeff Wilson. “We knew that end users and contractors wanted easy access to product literature and support. We also wanted to make it painless for new prospects to see product specifications so they could make quick comparisons while researching.”

The new website boasts an appealing and functional design, making it easy to navigate for individuals looking for products, applications, distributors and tech support. Koldwave also includes a page dedicated to informing those with the latest news in regards to Koldwave, Mestek and commercial portable air conditioner installation and other relevant industry news.

A new toll free number is also available to customers, in an effort to eliminate time spent searching on the website for the proper person to contact. A single phone number will direct all calls to the appropriate department including sales, parts, technical services and warranty. A “frequently asked questions” page was additionally added to the page so customers can learn more about commercial portable air conditioners and the differences between water-cooled air conditioners and air-cooled portable air conditioners.

An industry leader in air- and water-cooled portable air conditioning solutions, Koldwave offers a comprehensive selection of state-of-the-art portable air-conditioning systems that are capable of addressing the full spectrum of temporary, spot and emergency HVAC cooling applications.

About the company: 
Koldwave is a manufacturer and supplier of industrial and commercial portable air conditioners based in Dallas, TX, and a member of the Mestek family of HVAC and machinery products. Koldwave offers two complete lines of air-cooled and water-cooled spot coolers, and the portable air conditioner capacities range from 6,300 to 61,200 BTU/HR. To see what Koldwave products can do for you, visit http://www.koldwave.com.

One of the first lessons from the past is that hot air rises.  Seems obvious doesn't it?  Believe it or not there is actually a company that is successfully convincing people that by making their air even hotter than everyone else they can do a better job of keeping people comfortable from 20 or 30 feet above them.  But that is a different story for another time.

Because people realized that hot air rises, many early structures in very warm climates would be built with very high roof lines.  This would allow the hottest air to stay above the people and increase their comfort.  Many of those structures would also have vents or openings at the highest point of the roof so that the hot air could escape.  As that hot air left the structure it would be replaced by cooler outside air near the floor level.  A continuous circulation pattern would develop that kept the "cooling cycle" going.  The taller the structure, and the hotter the air, the faster this cycle would operate.  Today, we call that phenomenon "stack effect" and you see it in every tall building elevator shaft in the world.  You also see it in chimneys for residences.

After the invention of air conditioning though we seem to have forgotten one of the key elements of this natural cooling cycle...venting the hot air out of the building.  In most modern air conditioned buildings we keep the hottest air inside the building and just keep cooling it back down in a constant cycle that requires compressor or chiller energy.  In many cases the hot air inside the building is still cooler than the hot air outside the building so this might make sense during the hottest months of the year.  However, in the case of a data center or server room, the hot aisle air is usually much hotter than the air outside...but most data centers use cooling equipment that constantly tries to cool down that hot aisle air resulting in huge energy consumption.

Some systems also take advantage of the "stack effect" in a shorter building by recognizing that any heat source in the space will create it's own "mini stack effect".  Cooler air will be drawn towards the heat source and the hot air above the heat source can be exhausted.  This creates some natural circulation in the space and is one of the key principles behind "displacement ventilation".

Another lesson from the past is that evaporating water will make air cooler.  We actually use that very same principle in modern chiller systems that include a cooling tower.  The cooling tower is nothing more than a very large evaporative cooler.  In the old days people would use wet cloths or reeds in a window opening and when air entered the building through those wet items (probably accelerated by the building "stack effect") the entering air would get cooler and the people would be more comfortable.  Today there are many types and sizes of evaporative coolers available, such as those from Alton and Aztec divisions of Mestek, and they work even better than those primitive early methods.  But no compressor or chiller energy is required.

Of course there are building construction techniques that are also based on lessons from the past.  Positioning a building so that the smallest outside wall area is the one that sees the most sun will help keep the occupants cooler.  Using "thermal mass"...thick, heavy, walls...can also keep occupants cooler by storing cool night air energy in the wall and releasing it slowly during the hottest part of the day.  Again, we often build very light weight buildings today and try to compensate by adding insulation but nothing beats two feet of solid rock.  Some architects are working to revive this technique and research is continuing on using chemical treatments on walls and ceilings that allow them to store energy longer.  One case where creating a lot of "thermal mass" might not be such a good idea is in the data center world.  Depending upon how the hot aisle air is handled it might actually be a good idea to make the walls very thin so that the heat can escape to the outside through the walls.  Finally, the use of shades and window coverings is also a key lesson from the past.  Some companies, such as the American Warming division of Mestek, offer exterior solar shades that actually track the position of the sun and change angle in order to maximize the shading effect.

There are many other lessons from the past that could be discussed but the key is to stop and think about how we used to do things.  Sometimes adapting ideas from the past to ideas from today can result in the best overall solution.

Over the next weeks units shipped from Mestex Dallas will begin to include a small feature that we believe will provide large benefits to our contractor customers.

A common problem in the field with installation, operation & maintenance (IOM) documents is that they are misplaced, lost, or left in the weather and become unusable.  Over the last few years we have taken steps to make replacing those documents a bit easier by posting them on our Sales Assistant website for downloading.  While this is a big improvement over calling Dallas during business hours and ordering a document, it still requires the user to contact us and then log in to Sales Assistant for the download.

Starting July 1, equipment shipped from Dallas will continue to contain a printed copy of the IOM but it will also have a new label that includes a “Microsoft Tag” image.  Microsoft Tags are basically customized, square, barcodes that can be read by cell phones, and some tablet devices, using the free “tag reader” software from Microsoft at http://gettag.mobi.

After downloading the free reader app, if the service contractor has a cell phone with a camera he will be able to aim the camera at the tag and the software will automatically launch the phone’s web browser to open a PDF copy of the proper IOM.  IOM documents will then be available to a contractor or service technician 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  And since the IOMs are stored in the Mestek corporate “cloud”, any updates will be automatic and it will not be necessary to keep up with revisions in the field.

Of course, once the file is opened on the phone most devices will allow the document to be saved and transferred to a computer for printing if desired.  We hope this new feature will make life a bit easier for our customers.

It is not uncommon for corporate or medical facility server rooms to grow increasingly dense as the need for data storage and transfer grows with a business.  The end result can be a server room that starts to run hotter than the company would like.  This is especially true when the server room is built into a leased space that was never designed for the types of heat loads that a room full of servers will create.  One solution that is seeing more application is to add a Koldwave air-cooled portable air conditioner to the room.  In this case the Koldwave unit was added to the end of the rack cold aisle in a semi-permanent installation.  The result was a relatively low cost answer to the overheating that was also easy to install.

Most companies today require some sort of small server room to house their network computers or even their digital phone system equipment.  Trimming temperatures in a room not originally designed for that purpose can be accomplished using Koldwave Portable Air Conditioners.

This is an actual case photo of a typical small business server room.  This 144 square foot room houses 4 servers, 2 routers, 2 switches, 1 PC, and a UPS system.  By installing a 3 ton Koldwave air-cooled air conditioner the room temperature was reduced by roughly 25 degrees...enough to put the room temperature well within the latest ASHRAE guidelines for server equipment.  Note that the Koldwave unit uses the optional vent duct to push the hot condenser air out of the server room...further enhancing the conditions in the room.

A February 22 article in the Data Center Knowledge emag published more information regarding the third revision of the ASHRAE "Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments".  According to the Data Center Knowledge article the expanded ranges for operating temperatures and humidities may be a way for ASHRAE to catch up with the recommendations of the major players in the IT industry.  Google, Intel, Microsoft, and HP are all quoted as praising the higher operating ranges.

In fact, Christian Belady, the General Manager of Data Center Research at Microsoft Global Foundation Services, was quoted as saying "Most companies in the cloud business are already procuring servers that operate well outside of the ASHRAE specs to allow for aggressive economization to drive much greater efficiencies then what is achievable using the ASHRAE specs,"

The new ASHRAE guidelines define four classes of operating environment with classes 3 and 4 recommended to use outside air only for cooling.  Class 1 and 2 are defined as typical data center server environments, although Mr. Belady's comments might suggest that the big data center players have moved past this already. 

However, the ASHRAE allowable range:

• o class 1 is now 89.6 degrees F,
• o class 2 or 3 is now 95 degrees F,
• o class 4 is now 104 degrees F.

The demand for data processing is growing exponentially with the increasing use of "smartphones", tablets, and "cloud computing".  It is also becoming a critical factor for hospital and medical center server rooms as they try to keep up with the processing demands of electronic medical records.  The result is server rooms that are overheating as more and more processors are crammed into smaller and smaller spaces with HVAC systems that were never designed to handle the cooling load.  Koldwave portable cooling systems can help solve that problem.  The new ASHRAE guidelines allow server room operators to install a relatively small Koldwave unit that will "trim the temperatures" down to the recommended levels.