HVAC – Dehumidified Air Solutions

Drury Hotels Benefits from a Single Point of Contact

September 25, 2020September 22, 2020

As many hotel engineers will probably agree, there is an art to the task of managing multiple sites. This complexity multiplies when you’re dealing with differing types and brands for the mechanical systems.

Every indoor pool is different and has unique requirements, and this is true for the HVAC as well. When you’re responsible for many hotels, you often find yourself dealing with many disparate contacts for all of your needs: maintenance, repair and procurement.

On top of that, not all HVAC contractors can effectively service and support indoor pool dehumidifiers to a high level, so you often wind up paying for them to simply call the manufacturer for factory assistance.

For 10 years now, Drury Hotels has benefitted in more ways than one from standardizing as a national account with Dehumidified Air Solutions. Their team of experienced in-house engineers have just one point of contact for all things indoor pool HVAC, from design to start-up and commissioning.

Your Pool Dehumidification Partner

With a full team of engineers focused on creating the perfect guest experience through cutting-edge designs, Dehumidified Air Solutions ensures ease to all pool projects while getting the job done the right way the first time, every time.

Drury uses semicustom controls on units for some of their indoor pools that can be opened up and converted to outdoor pools via glass doors. Guests love these unique facilities because they get the feeling of being outdoors on those summer days of perfect weather. However, it creates hidden challenges with the control and operation of the dehumidifier. After all, you don’t want to be dehumidifying when the doors are opened as that would waste energy. At the same time, Drury still wanted the option to circulate some air, so the space doesn’t get too stuffy.

With their single point of contact for design help, Drury’s engineers were able to get dehumidifiers built the way they needed for these special situations. There is full control with the unit, enabling Drury to shut off the compressors when doors are opened, with the option to keep fans running or also be turned off. The atypical feature was no trouble to add because of Dehumidified Air Solutions’ experience with hotel pools, including those of this type.

Simple and Trustworthy

You’ve probably benefitted from having a “single point of contact” without realizing it. If you use an email app that includes a calendar, that is one example. Another is investing with the same bank where you have your checking account. In many situations, your life is just easier when you only need to deal with one company for all your needs in a given area. When it comes to indoor pools, we want to be your single point of contact.

Since going with a single point of contact for their indoor pools, Drury has an easier time getting their issues taken care of. Because Drury works directly with their National Accounts representative, there is no “broken telephone” effect from communicating with a third-party sales firm, who then communicates with a manufacturer. Drury Hotels gets exactly what they want because they work directly with a dedicated expert who is their touchpoint for everything they need when it comes to hotel pool HVAC, whether it’s design help, service or parts.

As a national account, Drury also gets a special discount on all factory parts sales, along with the option to buy factory-direct service contracts for added peace of mind and simple management. Or they can simply call for factory support anytime they need it.

Want to take a deeper dive?

We’d love to discuss your unique hotel pool and provide detailed advice to meet your needs. Leave a comment below or complete the form on the right for a direct response.

Real Peace of Mind with Web Monitoring — Standard on Every Unit

September 22, 2020

With Dehumidified Air Solutions National Accounts, you get full access the industry’s most powerful web monitoring platform for the lifetime of your equipment, for free.

We were the first to offer web monitoring for dehumidifiers in the industry, starting in 2003. Back then, connecting HVAC equipment to the internet was very new and web monitoring was a novel concept. Every dehumidifier we build ships standard with this feature so you have the best support possible.

Since the beginning, we have continuously innovated our offering to build in stronger capabilities and take full advantage of the advanced sensors that form the heart of our designs. Refrigerant pressure transducers enable you and service technicians to check the pressure of the refrigeration circuit from an internet-connected device, with no need to use a manifold gauge to open the circuit and take a reading. This saves money on service visits and totally eliminates the small losses of refrigerant that equipment experiences when gauges are removed from a unit.

There are many benefits to ensuring all your new units get connected to Web Monitoring. Not only do future maintenance or service situations become a breeze, but units continually connected from start-up also get an additional nine months of coverage on the initial 90-day repair labor allowance warranty for a total coverage term of one year!

When a unit is online, it’s uploading operational data to our servers every 60 seconds, 24/7. That means it’s easy for end users and service technicians to monitor operation and ensure peak performance. It also helps to identify and remediate root causes when something goes wrong. In some cases, issues can even be resolved remotely.

Key Advantages

With Web Monitoring, you can provide these benefits to your customer:

Real peace of mind – 24/7 unit monitoring for life.
Robust online reporting of real-time performance data.
Simple plug and play Ethernet connection.
Optional Wi-Fi and cellular connections available.
Secure access and control via computer, tablet or smartphone.
Connection activates premium extended 1st year labor warranty.
Allows remote assisted unit start-up.
Authorized technicians fine tune unit performance remotely.
Real-time sensor monitoring including refrigeration pressures.
Remote access and control for authorized service personnel.
Adjust fan speed remotely.

To understand how the small cost and effort required to bring an Ethernet line to a dehumidifier can really pay off, consider these two scenarios.

Scenario 1 — Unit Connected to Web Monitoring

A unit is frequently suffering high pressure trips. You call your service contractor, but the good news is the unit is connected so a visit is not immediately required. Instead, your technician logs onto the unit via web monitoring. The first thing they can do is clear the alarm and reset the unit, to allow it to run normally. If the alarm was nothing serious, that is all they have to do. If it is a real issue that needs attention, the alarm will come up again. The technician can set themselves up to be alerted via email of any alarms, so then if it comes up again they can move onto stage 2 of response.

The next stage is to log into the web monitoring system to look at the unit history. By viewing the history up to the alarm, the technician can make an educated diagnosis of what the problem is. In this case, they notice the unit trips on head pressure every time it calls for air conditioning mode. To confirm their diagnosis, they can call Dehumidified Air Services to speak with a factory technician, who can also check the data and give a second opinion. After agreement, your contractor has you go out to the outdoor heat exchanger to find it blocked by debris. After you clear the heat exchanger, your contractor can remotely simulate an A/C call and to confirm there are no more head pressure trips. Problem solved — and at a fraction of the cost it would have been to have a site visit by your contractor.

Scenario 2 — Unit that is Not Connected

Your contractor doesn’t see the unit online, so has to visit it inside the mechanical room to find the latest alarm on the touchscreen and try to figure out what’s causing it. They can make some guesses, but without access to the history of the unit there is no way to be sure of the cause. There are a lot of reasons for an alarm, and a dehumidifier has a lot of components the technician would have to check if they want to run down the cause. Generally in these cases, the best they can do is reboot the unit and come back again next time it happens. This is a recipe for repeated callbacks that do little to resolve the problem, and often make the owner feel like their unit just isn’t working at all.

Conclusion

As the two examples illustrate, units that are connected to Web Monitoring are a lot more convenient for everyone involved. When you contact your service contractor with the unit serial number, technicians are able to see the relevant operating history and more easily diagnose causes.

Web Monitoring ships standard with every dehumidifier from Dehumidified Air Solutions National Accounts. Our years of development has created the most powerful offering in the industry, with detailed sensor readings, trend charts and diagnostics — for free, for life.

3 Reasons Why Indoor Pools are Different

September 22, 2020

Indoor pools are quite unlike any other type of room in a hotel. When it comes to designing and operating them, they are also notably more complex. Indoor pool projects don’t come around every day, so having experienced people involved in the design of a new facility is the most reliable predictor of success.

In this post, we’ll explain 3 things that make indoor pools special.

Reason #1: High Moisture Load

The HVAC requirements for indoor pools are nothing like in your typical indoor space. The average room is air-conditioned from a temperature perspective, i.e. it is focused on the sensible load of the space. With indoor pools, the system is primarily designed for moisture removal, i.e. latent load. As most HVAC applications are not latent-heavy, this fact alone really makes a difference. The equipment that must be used is sized and designed differently, and getting it right requires experience and focused knowledge.

Most consulting engineers will only design one indoor pool in their career. As a result, they appreciate the assistance of dehumidifier manufacturers, who specialize and work with the technology every day. When they team up with us, you get the best possible outcome.

Reason #2: Different Air Distribution Needs

The kind of air distribution duct design that works in traditional indoor spaces quickly lead to problems when applied to indoor pools. In fact, many facilities today struggle with poor indoor air quality for this reason.

A very common type of duct layout in traditional indoor spaces will place the supply air diffusers and the return air intakes overhead. When applied to indoor pools, this approach results in poor air movement and a failure to break up and remove chemicals that accumulate above the water surface and deck.

For an indoor pool, it is essential to have good airflow in the “breathing zone”, which is the area from the water surface and deck level to about 7 feet. This is where the people are, and they need fresh ventilation air to breath. The best quality air in a pool comes directly out of the dehumidifier. This air has been dehumidified, filtered, blended with outdoor air and conditioned for optimal comfort. It’s the best quality air in the space by far, and so you need a well-designed duct system that works airflow down to the deck level, as well as across the water surface to break up accumulating chemicals.

If you have overhead supply ductwork, a low return is effective towards getting a good overall airflow pattern in the space. When you add in an exhaust fan that is strategically placed to capture off-gassing chemicals (like directly above the hot tub) and eject them from the space, you can get significantly better air quality for minimal investment.

Knowing what works and what doesn’t work from an air distribution perspective really comes down to experience. While a good general guideline is to have high supply and low return, the specifics of all indoor pool air distribution designs are very dependent on the project.

Reason #3: Different Guest Comfort Needs

Pools are one of the most popular amenities at any hotel. Many people, especially families on vacation, will not even consider staying at hotels that do not have a pool! When you have so many people drawn to your business because of your pool, you’ll also encounter a wide variety of guest expectations that all need to be met. This is where our experience really helps. We have designed thousands of hotel pools and know where most facilities need to operate to keep swimmers and people on the deck comfortable. While this experience is vital, the design team still needs to get vital input from you to ensure your patrons are happy.

One of the ways guest comfort needs can vary is in water and room conditions. What temperatures should you operate your facility at? If you have a lot of elderly guests, then they will probably prefer warmer temperatures, like 84–88°F water and 84 or 85°F for air. While this is not much different to the typical 84°F water and 82°F air used, that small change has a big impact and needs to be known up front.

This is where experience goes a long way in the design. Someone who is not experienced with indoor pools may pick a set of space conditions from a table, without considering what the special needs of the space are.

Conclusion

Here’s the big question: Are indoor pools extremely difficult to design? The answer may surprise you: No, not if you know what you are doing. It all comes down to experience. Everybody is much more polished the 10^th time they do something compared to the first and second time. You learn from your mistakes and refine your design. You get better and better. Here is the rub: there simply aren’t enough indoor pools around to afford many people that luxury. It is exceptionally rare that everyone on a team involved in an indoor pool design will have significant experience.

As you do more and more pools, vital aspects of the design become second nature.

That is where we come in. We’re Dehumidified Air Solutions and in our years of experience with indoor pool dehumidification through our Seresco, Dectron and PoolPak brands, we’ve seen just about everything.

We want to help you make your specific hotel pool a total success that keeps guests happy and generates revenue. If you’re looking for detailed expert advice, please leave a comment below or complete the form on the right for a direct response.

Giving You Options, with 100% HVAC Equipment Financing

August 11, 2021July 13, 2020

Financing Calculator

These unprecedented times call for creative ways to ensure your indoor pool dehumidifier operates at peak performance, protecting your indoor pool environment. That’s why Dehumidified Air Solutions National Accounts has a partner to offer 100% financing options for your equipment purchase.

Financing Calculator

NewLane Finance has provided a convenient equipment financing calculator to quickly calculate monthly payment options.

Why Financing?

Financing is a new option to help you ease the financial challenge of replacing old equipment or beginning new projects that require indoor pool dehumidification solutions.

There are many reasons why financing could be a good choice for you: If you urgently require a replacement of failed equipment, you may wish to minimize your capital expenditure during uncertain times, or prefer affordable payments over time instead of a large, one-time capital cost. Whatever your needs or preferences may be, financing gives you options. Financing is available for just the dehumidifier, or you can apply to get financing for your full mechanical if desired.

Financing with our partners is fast, because your business deserves priority. Application decisions are typically made in under two hours and funds are wired same-day. This means administration for your project is simpler because, once agreements are signed, all parties are funded quickly and easily.

Are You Replacing Failing Equipment?

Financing can help you get up and running quickly. If an existing dehumidifier is causing significant repair costs or has failed, it is time for a new system. If that decision is being delayed because replacing dehumidification equipment poses a significant capital investment, we have your solution.

Ease the Financial Burden

Financing options can give you the flexibility you want with the speed you need, with a simple application process and decisions typically in under two hours. Funds are wired directly to parties providing goods and services. The result? You get your hotel pool back up and running to minimize downtime and asset damage, and to keep guests coming back.

Financing allows you to:

Get back up and running right away.
Eliminate upfront capital costs of equipment and installation.
Make affordable payments over time.
Take advantage of IRS Section 179 to deduct the complete cost of equipment, and 100% of its depreciated value, the same year of purchase.
Pay for full installation costs and service contracts.

Providing Options

Speak to a member of our National Accounts team about how our turnkey financing and installation partners can help you. We’d love to discuss your unique pool environment and conditions and recommend a financing company to provide you options.

Email us: nationalaccounts@dehumidifiedairsolutions.com
Call us: 1-833-DAS-HVAC (1-833-327-4822)

The National Accounts Program from Dehumidified Air Solutions offers indoor pool owners of hotels, athletic facilities and swim schools exclusive membership benefits for dehumidification equipment, parts and service.