Table of contents:
1.Why steel ducting is ready for the scrapyard
1.1 Heavy metals and long installation times 1.2 Bacteria, mould and rust1.3 Costly and disruptive maintenance...
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JMC Vietnam is a Korean-backed clothing factory operating in Bac Giang Province, Vietnam.
Each year they produce more than 1.5 million uniforms for major corporations based out of the US, EU, Japan, and Korea. With high profile clients like Samsung, Crocodile and Young international, JMC must constantly strive to maintain the outstanding quality of their products. And that means keeping their factory in peak working order.
By 2020, JMC had succeeded in maintaining a streamlined operation for decades. There was just one part of their factory in Bac Giang crying out for improvement, their HVAC system.
After decades of hard work, JMC was all too familiar with the shortcomings of traditional steel ducting. Maintenance was a costly and time consuming chore, made necessary by the buildup of rust, mould and harmful bacteria.
“Whenever you use steel ducting, you have to call in professional maintenance teams to clean out the ducts. This always takes a long time and winds up costing quite a lot of money,” says Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh, Vice Director of JMC Vietnam.
“Also, while steel ducts are being cleaned you can’t actually operate at full capacity, since the process is so disruptive. So you end up losing out on production while also paying for the cleaning service. Still, it’s something you have to do to keep a traditional HVAC system running smoothly, as well as to make sure that there isn’t rust or mould building up inside of the ducts,” Vice Director Vân Anh adds.
But that wasn’t JMC’s only issue with traditional steel ducting.
Large ceiling fans placed throughout the factory to improve air flow made mounting steel ducting an engineering nightmare. Steel ducts were so bulky and difficult to position between the overhead fans that management often found themselves having to choose between using one or the other, producing a myriad of indoor climate issues.
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What's more, the exposed steel ducts were an eye sore. They took up space and clashed with the company’s design vision.
Worst of all, factory workers frequently complained about the uncomfortable draughts produced by overhead air vents. Employees spoke openly of “air-con sickness.” A combination of discomfort and unhygienic working conditions resulted in frequent absences and flagging productivity.
It was an unnecessarily dysfunctional situation for everyone involved.
So when the time came for JMC Vietnam to expand production and build a new facility from the ground up, they knew they needed a breath of fresh air.
That’s where Euro Air came into the picture.
“We built the new JMC facility with textile ducting in mind from the very start,” says Vice Director Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh.
“A friend of mine whose husband is Danish introduced us to the concept of textile ducting, and we learned more about how it’s already being widely used in Europe, especially in public places like airports,” Vân Anh says.
Vân Anh and the rest of JMC’s management team were impressed by textile ducting’s flexibility and ease of use, as well as with its pleasing design qualities. But their main interest had more to do with textile ducting’s operational benefits.
Textile ducts heat, cool and ventilate indoor environments much more efficiently than traditional HVAC systems. The entire surface area of a textile duct acts as one big diffuser, allowing treated air to exit evenly through the textile material’s permeable surface. From there, air flows down naturally, collecting uniformly in the space below. This even air distribution creates a much more stable indoor climate, resulting in lower system operating pressures and significant energy savings.
Read More: Euro Air & The Future of Sustainable HVAC Design
“Textile ducts distribute air more evenly than steel ducts, which results in more efficient cooling and much less energy consumption. So we knew that it would help us cut-costs on power,” says Vice Director Vân Anh. “We also knew that we would stand to save a lot of time and money on maintenance.”
Euro Air’s textile ducts are produced from permeable non-organic polyester materials, allowing air to continuously pass through their flexible surfaces. This prevents the build up of condensation and eliminates the growth of mould and harmful bacteria, even in the humid climate of tropical Vietnam. And it goes without saying that textiles don’t rust, so there’s no need to worry about corrosion resistance ever again.
“With textile ducting we can take care of maintenance entirely on our own, and the process is so much faster. All we have to do is take the ducts down and wash them using regular washing machines. Instead of taking days or weeks it only takes a few hours, saving us loads of money in the long run,” says Vice Director Vân Anh.
The easy maintenance process means that Euro Air’s textile ducts aren’t just economical, they’re also great news for anyone looking to keep their factory clean and their employees healthy.
“Management from JMC wanted us to use textile ducting from Euro Air from the very start,” says Mr. Quân Đinh, a site technician with Mesco, the sub-contractor responsible for installing HVAC systems at JMC’s updated facility in Bac Giang.
“At first I was a little concerned about using textile ducts alongside the ceiling fans that JMC always uses in their factories. The fans have a wide wingspan, nearly 5 meters, so I wasn’t sure if there would be enough space for the ducts. I shouldn’t have been worried though, as soon as I began working with Euro Air’s team everything was extremely easy,” Đinh recalls.
“We gave Euro Air the exact dimensions and requirements of our space, and they used a very useful design software to provide us with system mock-ups that showed how everything would fit together,” Đinh says.
Euro Air’s specially developed TBV-Designer software can provide technical documents unique to any clients architectural or engineering needs. You provide your required air flow rate, space dimensions and project goals, and Euro Air’s support teams use the TBV-Designer tool to provide system recommendations that are tailor-made for you.
“Euro Air’s support crew even helped us make sure JMC’s industrial design choices were being met, providing us with textile ducts that perfectly matched the brand’s colours,” Đinh adds.
Euro Air’s textile ducts come in a huge variety of customisable colours. Euro Air works with a Danish partner company, Kemotextil a/s, to supply high quality dyes for all of their textile materials. What’s more, every chemical and colour used in Euro Air’s dyeing processes is Oeko‐Tex® 100 approved, so you can be certain that every last component has been proven safe for human health.
“On top of the nice design touches, the entire planning process only took about 2 weeks, keeping everything right on schedule,” says site technician Đinh.
“At first we weren’t sure if there would be some kind of engineering conflict between those ceiling fans and the textile ducts, but our contractors worked with Euro Air to plan out a solution that works perfectly,” confirms Vice Director Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh.
All of Euro Air’s air distribution systems feature modular designs, allowing users to mix and match between different textile types, air flow models, and suspension systems, to say nothing of various duct shapes and sizes. All this flexibility guarantees a bespoke solution for just about any architectural or engineering challenge.
Read More: Euro Air's Textile Ducting Product Guide 2021
“When it came time to install the Euro Air system we weren’t disappointed. It took us just over a week to install everything, much faster than it’s taken us to install steel ducting in the past,” adds Vice Director Vân Anh
“I’d say that installation was the most impressive part. Textile ducts are so much easier to arrange inside of a factory than hard steel ducts. All of their components are pre-manufactured, so the construction team can just clip and snap things into place. It really speeds up construction,” says site technician Quân Đinh.
“We finished installation for the entire 2000 square meter factory in just about a week. That’s fast! Because of that alone I’d say Mesco will always consider textile ducts for future projects,” Đinh says.
“We expected Euro Air’s textile ducts to save us on energy and maintenance costs, but we were pleasantly surprised by how much of a difference it’s already made on workplace comfort too,” Vice Director Vân Anh says.
“Many of our factory workers come from rural areas and don’t have a lot of experience with air conditioning. In fact, the term, ‘air-con sick,’ captures their discomfort working around powerful draughts. Our new Euro Air system doesn’t produce any draughts at all. It really makes you feel like you're in a natural climate with a comfortable temperature, so our employees like it very much, even the ones who normally complain about working around air con,” says Vân Anh.
Join JMC Vietnam in embracing the future of indoor climate. Find out what Euro Air Southeast Asia can do you for you today.
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Euro Air A/S |
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Euro Air SEA Ltd - Vietnam |