At Mor Electric Heating we have grown our sales/stock of Roof and Gutter Heating Cable, Pipe Heating Cable, Replacement Parts and Comfort Heaters. Over the past few years these high volume products have created a rapid growth in our number of shipments per day. We needed to expand our shipping and receiving areas again so we created a large area in our warehouse, which was unheated, so we set out to install infrared heaters.
We had 240 volt power available to pull from a nearby R&D room so we hired a local Electrical Contractor, Webb Electric, to install a sub-panel there and put each heater on separate breakers. (They are also one of our customers for snow melting mats, baseboard heaters, floor warming mats, etc.) They also installed two 120 volt drops for our computer and other equipment to plug into. They then moved on to installing all the conduit and the heaters and controls.
We approached the management team of Solaira Heaters to see if they were willing to supply some free heaters and controls because we wanted the cadillac of infrared heaters and controls, which is their Alpha Series and their low power variable control. Since we also wanted alot of heat at 12kW and individual controls, it would have been more costly than using one of our many less expensive heaters and no controls. They run a great company (Inforesight Consumer Products, Inc.) and take care of their valued distributors such as us and quickly said yes.
We chose the SALPHAH2-30240S (3.0kW 240Volt) because the reflector pattern, long life and 3,000 watts is well suited for our large area and 8-9 foot mounting height.
We had some challenges with the available mounting options but ended up with a system that was almost perfect for our needs. We had to hand two of them from the rafters with 25 feet of chain! We set the height as low as possible )(8-1/2 feet) while still being able to roll our ladder underneath them.
We chose the SCTR-120-240 which is a best seller for us and worked very well because there are times when only one or two of the three shipping stations are manned, so individually controling the heaters is an energy saver. They are also adjustable in 10% increments. Having a 3,000 watt heater 5 feet above your head is overkill on the vast majority of days. A 40% setting is much more likely to be used by our shipping employees. However, with the severity of the forecast for winter 2010-2011, we expect them to be running at 100% at times.
