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No Hot Air Here
Avedon’s Airius products are drawing attention (and air)
by
Tony Kindelspire
LONGMONT — Like most American manufacturers, Avedon Engineering was hit hard by jobs moving offshore — first to Mexico and then to the Pacific Rim and China.
The contract manufacturing company, which founder and president Ray Avedon brought to Longmont from Boulder in 1969, once did $25 million worth of business out of its 165,000-square-foot design and manufacturing facility in Longmont and employed 450 people. Today, the company is down to 50 workers.
But the drop in business gave Avedon an opportunity to take a hard look at an idea he’d been kicking around in his head for 20 years: the Thermal Equalizer.
Avedon markets and sells the Thermal Equalizer through a spinoff company, Airius.
He invented the device out of necessity. No matter how high the thermostats were set in his factory, the warm air would quickly rise to the 30-foot ceilings, and the workers down below would be cold.
“I knew I wanted an invisible column, an invisible duct” to keep the warm air moving down, he said.
Out of much trial and error came the Thermal Equalizer.
“Over the years, I’ve probably done 500 products,” Avedon said. “When I did this one, the Airius, this one we did for ourselves.”
His company has sold about 12,000 of the Thermal Equalizers so far, Avedon said, and continually improving the product has helped his current units be about 11 times more energy efficient than the prototype he started with.
The cylindrical unit typically hangs from the ceiling and collects the rising warm air. It sends this air back down to the floor in a straight, round column.
When the air hits the floor, it disperses the cold air and pushes it upward, creating a cyclical effect that keeps the air at an even temperature throughout the room.
The concept is based on destratification, Avedon said. Instead of having layers of different temperatures in a room, his invention creates an environment where it’s just as warm at the ceiling level as it is on the floor.
It works better than a ceiling fan, Avedon said, because a fan simply moves the air near the ceiling around and uses much more energy. The average Thermal Equalizer, Avedon said, uses the energy equivalent of a 35-watt light bulb.
The Thermal Equalizer comes in a variety of sizes, including some powerful enough to work in airplane hangars. Costs of the units range from $400 to $2,500 each, depending on size and configuration.
Because the unit keeps air at a uniform temperature, it saves users money because their furnaces will have to run less often.
Todd Isaacson, owner of Express Employment Professionals in Longmont, said he bought two units two years ago and uses them in areas with 9- to 12-foot ceiling heights.
“I definitely saved 20 percent (on my heating bill), and I have to say it’s because of them,” Isaacson said. “I was surprised at the savings, to be honest with you, because I had been in that space five years.”
In Longmont, the Pumphouse and Mike O’Shay’s also have Thermal Equalizers. Outside of Longmont, Boeing is a customer, Avedon said, and the U.S. Air Force uses the devices in its B-52 hangars at a base in Minot, N.D.
Because of its energy efficiency, Avedon’s product has received awards from the U.S. Green Building Council and, most recently, from Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy — CORE — a Colorado-based trade organization focused on sustainable business practices.
Not long after introducing the Thermal Equalizer, Airius came out with another product: a Thermal Equalizer equipped with an ultraviolet light that kills airborne and surface microbes such as mold, fungus and odor.
The Boulder County Jail is one of Airius’ customers for that product, Avedon said.
So far, his contract manufacturing business still accounts for about 70 percent of his companies’ revenues, Avedon said, but he expects that percentage to change as more people learn about the two lines of Airius Thermal Equalizers.
Customers in England, for example, “are talking about buying $60 million worth of product in the next few years,” Avedon said.
Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or tkindelspire@times-call.com.
