Posted by Sarah Villane on

The DeKalb Fire Department in northern Illinois began their search for more efficient industrial ceiling fans after they realized the two household fans installed at their fire station were not helping their working environment.

“It wouldn’t circulate the heat and/or cold, it wouldn’t circulate any fumes here on the bay floor,” said Firefighter Paramedic Patrick Erikson.

The weather in northern Illinois is frigid cold in the winter but they can have some hot and humid summers, too. The DeKalb Fire Station is consistently responding to calls, which means their doors are constantly opening and exposing their workplace to the northern Illinois elements. They had three criteria for their new industrial fans: longevity, durability, and size. They needed a fan large enough and designed to cool a large facility like theirs. They also wanted a fan that was going to last a long time and able to withstand the environment it’s in.

“You’re looking for something that’s going to be out in the garage, it’s going to be exposed to a lot of the elements with these garage doors going up and down,” Erikson said.

They chose the XP industrial fan by Hunter Industrial because it met their criteria but also because of Hunter’s reputation in the fan business as a whole. They were also impressed with a lot of the features of the XP fan.

“When it says plug-and-play, it is literally plug-and-play,” said Erikson of the XP fan, “The instructions that we got were great. The equipment that we had was great. We were able to mount the Bluetooth box up there and run it right down so we have our control panels right there at the ready when we want to change directions, change the speeds, everything else.”

The ability to easily access the fan controls and change the fan direction was a key feature for the DeKalb Fire Department. During the cold winters with the garages doors constantly opening when they leave on calls, it made the facility cold and the heaters run constantly. Since installing the XP industrial fans, Erikson said the heaters are running a lot less, making it a more productive environment.

”When it says plug-and-play, it is literally plug-and-play.“It’s getting that warm air around, which for us is effective especially in the winter time because we want to make sure that our equipment is at the ready,” he said, “When we have to wash and rinse off the rigs, we want to be cranking that heat up with the fan on and blowing the hot air around so it makes that rig dry that much faster and they’re not freezing up in the environment.” In the summer time, they keep the fans running to cool down the facility as well as help dry off the floors and trucks quicker.

Erikson said they encourage other municipal facilities like fire stations, police stations, and public works to invest in Hunter Industrial HVLS fans for the efficiencies that they’ve experienced.