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AMPORTS Business Aviation Center

Penn AMPORTS Business Aviation Center
Moon Township, PA
Installing Mechanical Contractor: Sauer Incorporated

Hangar Heating with CoRayVac
When Baker and Associates Engineering Company was awarded the project of designing the new maintenance hangar for AMPORTS Business Aviation Center in Moon Township, Pennsylvania they immediately called Herrmann Associates. They knew that Herrmann Associates had helped many engineering firms design heating systems for hangars throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Airplane hangars are challenging buildings to heat. They are high structures with big doors and they hold large volumes of air. Heat travels from hot to cold causing large volumes of expensively heated air go outside when hanger doors are opened.

Warm air systems have a hard time trying to heat airplane hangars. If warm air heaters are used, the warm air naturally rises to the roof where it doesn’t do any good. As a result, big blowers try to force the heat down to ground level. These systems tend to use a lot of electricity as well as natural gas and they are noisy. The noise is fatiguing and mechanics are cold. Good aviation mechanics are hard to find and cold mechanics look for jobs in warm hangars.

An overhead CoRayVac radiant heating system consisting of 12 burners was selected for the hangar along with six burners for the adjacent vehicle maintenance building. Tubes that radiate heat connected the burners. The system was mounted 25 feet above the hangar floor. Specially designed reflectors over the tubes direct heat downward warming people and objects below without the blowing of air, which creates warm and cold spots and stirs up dust and dirt. The system is completed by a powerful vacuum pump that expels the by-products of combustion to the outdoors at very low temperatures.

CoRayVac uses less fuel than other heating systems because they have high combustion efficiency. People are more comfortable, and at lower air temperatures, there is less heat stratification and lower building heat loss. It also has been reported that there is faster heat recovery when the large doors are closed because the concrete floors act like a heat sink and hold their warmth. This warmth is transmitted into the air when the door is closed.

These systems are safe. Their design is certified by the American Gas Association Laboratories as being in full compliance with American National Standards. Built-in timers allow the vacuum pump to draw air through the system before and after each heating cycle to insure all residual gasses are removed. The vacuum pump principle guards against any combustion products leaking into the building.

If you are thinking of designing or building a hangar, call Herrmann Associates. They will be happy to show you and tell you about many hangars heated with CoRayVac radiant heating systems including this one, where the General Manager says, “We have gone through two cold winters. The system works well and has kept the hangar comfortable. It also quickly melts ice and snow off cold airplanes when they are brought into the hangar.”