PROBLEM: Residents of this 24-story luxury Manhattan hi-rise were not happy. Sure, the East River views were beautiful, but the temperature within their apartments provided less than optimum comfort. The original thru-wall cooling units – manufactured by IW Corp. in the 1960s – were obsolete and not able to adequately cool the large living rooms of these luxury apartments. Many tenants had resorted to adding AC window units, ruining the outstanding views. The building’s managers had received ongoing complaints over the years, and were searching for a practical, cost-effective solution. With a very restricted condenser area, the old units would only provide around 9,000 BTUs, which was simply not supplying enough cooling for the room.
CHALLENGE: The original units were obsolete, and severely undersized. Additionally, the original architectural treatment of wedging each unit into an angled corner of the room, made it extremely difficult to replace the equipment with a more up-to-date unit.
SOLUTION: Thanks to Ice Air’s Made2Measure custom solutions program, we were able to create a larger, customized wall enclosure for these obsolete and one-off locations. And, by carefully re-cutting the existing wall sleeve opening, we could update the equipment to an RSK Series unit, almost doubling the cooling capacity from 9,000 to 17,000 BTUs. The project included the removal of the old units, cutting a larger opening, installing new wall sleeves and custom piping configurations consisting of new hand valves, steam heating coils, motorized solenoid valves and steam traps. All of the equipment and installation work had to be completed quickly, as the apartments were occupied, and had to meet precise customer specifications. The custom-built enclosures were designed to meet the different as-built conditions at each location and consisted of separate parts – top, two legs, base and front cover – which were then field-assembled for a precise, bespoke fit for each apartment.
RESULT: Building management is thrilled that they now have comfortable tenants and an end to complaints about the cooling and heating system. And, it did not hurt that the custom solutions of Ice Air’s Made2Measure equipment allowed a quick, custom installation at each location.