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A Wise Louisiana Purchase
New Orleans is well known for its stifling summer heat and humidity. With an average of 70 days a year over 90 degrees, and an average morning humidity of almost 90%, it’s a climate control challenge. So a business that stores and handles perishable goods needs to be well protected from that kind of steamy environment. That’s why another wise Louisiana purchase took place recently, when New Orleans Cold Storage Co., Ltd. (NOCS) needed to expand its capacity. The company, which was originally founded to make and supply ice to the rail and ship traffic in the busy port city remains “dedicated to the economic and flawless movement of time and temperature sensitive cargo.”
According to Hank Bonar, owner of Bonar Engineering, the project’s general contractor, “We had to correct an off-center slope apex in the floor and make it level. We accomplished this by using tapered EPS. This also helped us with the performance and weight issues, which we were also having to deal with.” Bonar noted that the building sits on a pier, extending 80 percent over water, making weight a very important consideration. The product chosen to solve this floor decking challenge was Atlas EPS Tapered EPS. The specs of the job were sent to the Atlas EPS design team, where they designed a tapered layout for the floor renovation. The 1.0 pcf Tapered EPS ranged from a thickness of 1/2-inch to 15 and 3/4 inches, leveling the floor before a layer of concrete was applied. Atlas EPS is a subsidiary of Atlas Roofing Corporation.
Charles Shenton, Atlas Specialty Products Manager, explained that “the application of EPS gave the building the needed insulation efficiency that a cold storage facility requires.” The floor required 26 truckloads of 1.0 pcf tapered Atlas EPS for this massive project. But the floor was not the only area of the building needing energy efficient insulation. Shenton explained that Atlas was also able to supply insulation for the roofing renovation of the building. “The roof for this 144,000 square-foot building required two layers of 3.4-inch ACFoam-II polyiso roof insulation.” Insulated Structures Incorporated of Orlando, Fla., was the roofing contractor for the NOCS job. Owner Forrest Mitchell explained that his company also provided a .045 Reinforced TPO white mechanically fastened membrane system with heat welded seams.
Because of the challenge that the New Orleans climate presented, the roof system of the freezer building had to be extremely energy efficient. The 3.4-inch ACFoam-II polyiso used on the project delivers an LTTR rating of 21.1, per layer providing superior thermal efficiency. Sensitivity to the environment, a common concern for refrigeration companies, was certainly a factor in the choice of insulation products for this project. Atlas Roofing Corporation has committed to the manufacture of environmentally friendly insulation products. Neither Atlas EPS nor Atlas ACFoam-II contains any harmful CFCs or HCFCs. New Orleans Cold Storage’s dedication to protect its “time and temperature sensitive cargo” was certainly a challenge during the renovation of this simple metal building into a state-of-the-art cold storage facility. From the leveling of the floor deck, with thermally efficient Atlas EPS tapered EPS, to the insulation of the roof system, with Atlas ACFoam-II Polyiso, this “Louisiana Purchase” clearly represented a wise decision. |
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Two hundred years ago, the United States made a wise purchase when it bought Louisiana from France for $15 million. James Monroe and Robert Livingston kept their cool during heated discussions with Napoleon Bonaparte and walked away with some hot real estate. The bayou state remains hot to this day, in more ways than one.
The NOCS warehousing division recently decided to transform a 144,000 square foot metal warehouse building into a cold storage facility. This building needed major alterations to assume its new cold storage function.
“We started out with a huge piece of foam, 32 inches thick by 48 inches wide by 24 feet long. Then we shaped it into tapered wedges, forming a huge puzzle in pieces. We labeled the pieces before shipment so that the customer could easily put them together in the proper layout,” a design team member said.
“There was a main freezer building, where we put the two layers of 3.4-inch polyiso. We also worked on the machine room and loading dock, where we put in two layers of 2-inch material, and in the offices, where we installed one layer of 2-inch insulation. The cold storage job was definitely the largest one we’ve worked on,” Mitchell said.