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Warehouse, industrial and workshops
Conditioning the full volume of a warehouse is rarely worth what it costs. Cooling the places people actually stand, bringing the heat back down from roof level in winter, and ventilating the rest usually gets you a workable building for a fraction of the money.
CoolIn designs and installs cooling, destratification and ventilation for warehouses, workshops, production areas and industrial units across Manchester and the North West, including the mezzanine offices that sit inside them.
What makes industrial different
The instinct is to ask what it costs to air condition the warehouse. The better question is which parts of it actually need conditioning, because the answer is almost never all of it.
A high bay unit holds a huge amount of air above head height that nobody benefits from cooling. Sizing plant for the full volume produces a capital cost and a running cost out of all proportion to the comfort it buys.
Warm air rises and sits at roof level, so in winter you can have a roof space well above 20C while the floor is cold, and you are paying to heat both. Destratification fans push that layer back down and often pay for themselves on the heating bill alone.
Ovens, compressors, presses and welding bays put heat into the building continuously and in one place. Extracting or containing it at source is nearly always cheaper than cooling the whole space afterwards, and it usually works better.
A boxed office sitting inside a warehouse gets the warm roof layer on top of its own load, with no external wall on most sides. It behaves nothing like the floor below it and needs its own system rather than a share of anything.
The options
Four approaches, and most sites end up with a combination rather than one of them. Which combination depends on where the people and the heat are.
Cooling delivered to packing benches, picking faces, workshop bays and other places people stand for hours, rather than to the volume as a whole. Far less capacity, far less running cost, and the comfort lands where it is noticed.
High level fans that bring the warm layer at roof level back down to where people are. Cheap to install, cuts the heating demand noticeably in a tall building, and makes the floor feel better in winter without adding heat.
Where a whole area genuinely does need conditioning, plant at high level feeding ducted distribution keeps equipment out of the way of racking, forklift routes and cranes.
Often the better answer in a workshop. Removing process heat, fume or dust at source through extract and make up air deals with the cause instead of paying to cool the result.
Budget
Installed prices covering equipment, labour, commissioning and handover. Industrial work is quoted per project more than any other sector, because access equipment, height and the electrical supply available change the figure substantially.
Guide prices, installed. Confirmed at site survey.
Mezzanine, site office, control room. Installed prices
Benches, bays and picking faces. Installed prices
Production hall or conditioned store. Installed prices
These are guide bands, not quotations. Height drives industrial prices. Work above a certain level needs access equipment, a permit regime and often a second pair of hands, and that shows up in the labour before any equipment is priced. We establish access at survey so the written price holds.
Duties and comfort
This comes up on every industrial survey, usually as a claim about a legal maximum temperature. It is worth being clear about what the rules do and do not require.
Workplace regulations require a reasonable temperature rather than a specific one, and there is no upper figure in law that forces an employer to send people home. The approved guidance suggests a minimum of around 16C, dropping to about 13C where the work involves severe physical effort.
What does apply is the general duty to assess the risk and act on it. In a building where people work hard in high summer heat, that assessment is a real obligation even though no thermometer reading triggers it automatically.
In practice the argument for cooling an industrial space is usually productivity, error rates and staff retention rather than a rule somebody can point at.
Standard equipment in a dusty building blocks up fast, and a blocked coil or filter cuts capacity before it causes an outright failure. Filter grade, coil coating and unit position all need specifying against the actual environment rather than a catalogue default.
Where forklifts operate, physical protection for pipework, isolators and low level plant belongs in the design rather than being added after the first impact.
We set servicing intervals against how dirty the building actually is, not against a standard office schedule.
Industrial sites frequently have air conditioning spread across offices, control rooms and production areas, and TM44 counts the whole building. The 12kW threshold is crossed easily once several areas are added together.
Process refrigeration and cold storage sit under their own separate regime and are a different trade from comfort cooling, so they are quoted and maintained separately.
We work out the total across the site at survey and tell you where you stand against both thresholds.
How it works
A free survey, a written price with the heat load working shown, and a programme set around your hours. The four stages are the same on every commercial job and are set out in full on the commercial page, along with servicing plans and what to do about breakdowns.
We work on industrial sites across Trafford Park, Salford, Warrington, Wigan, Bolton and the wider North West, including Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Warrington and Liverpool. See every town we cover.
Other business types
Each sector has its own page, because a server room and a hair salon are genuinely different jobs. The commercial overview covers what applies to all of them.
Questions
No. The regulations require a reasonable temperature rather than naming an upper limit, so there is no figure at which work must legally stop. The approved guidance does suggest a minimum of around 16C, or about 13C where the work is physically demanding. The duty to assess and control the risk still applies in hot conditions.
Technically yes, and for most buildings it is not worth what it costs. The volume above head height is the problem. Cooling the zones where people actually work, ventilating the rest and dealing with process heat at source gets a far better result for the money in nearly every case.
Warm air collects at roof level where nobody feels it. Destratification fans push that layer back down to floor level. In a tall building it can cut heating demand noticeably and makes the working area feel warmer in winter without adding any heat, which is why it is often the first thing we recommend.
Yes, and that is normally the right approach. Spot and zone cooling delivers capacity where people stand for hours, at a fraction of the capital and running cost of conditioning the whole space. The zones are agreed at survey from how the building is used.
Those sit under a separate regime from comfort cooling and are a different trade, so we quote and maintain them separately rather than folding them into a comfort cooling package. Tell us what you need at survey and we will be straight with you about scope.
It will shorten their life if the plant was specified for an office. Filter grade, coil protection and where the unit draws its air from all need choosing against the real environment, and the servicing interval needs to match. Done properly, industrial plant lasts. Done from a catalogue, it does not.
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