The yearly AHR Expo is filled with exciting news. Numerous companies take the time to release new products, feature their best ones, and give contractors the opportunities to see the products up close. The company formerly known as Cambridge Engineering had its own news — a new name, logo, tagline, and website address. The company is now known as Cambridge Air Solutions.

“The name change for us, Cambridge Air Solutions, is about doing more than heating and building, which was our legacy,” said Doug Eisenhart, vice president of sales and marketing at Cambridge Air Solutions. “It’s about delivering both products, platforms, and services as a solution company where we go in and help people that are interested in improving the environment for the people that are working in the factory.”

Along with the name change came a new tagline, “Enriching lives.” Eisenhart said that the tagline is tied to Cambridge Air Solutions’ Why-We-Exist statement, “Cambridge exists to glorify God by enriching the quality of every life we touch.”

“The products that we make help us to fulfill that promise,” said Eisenhart. “So the products are actually helping to enrich the lives of people that might be working in unclean air or might be working in too hot or too cold an environment.”

He added that Cambridge makes various technology platforms, but its end goal is to improve environments for working people. Cambridge’s new logo also supports this. The logo is shaped as a capital “C” for Cambridge, with three airflows that symbolize ventilation, heating, and cooling.

The rebranding comes on the heels of Cambridge Air Solution’s acquisition of Spec-Air and Ares cooling products brand from Essick Air and the company’s subsequent introduction of evaporative cooling products.

“With our introduction of evaporative cooling products last year, we simply outgrew the old name, logo, and tagline,” said Cambridge’s marketing director, Randy Niederer. “So we explored how to better align these elements with our company’s vision for the future. We selected Cambridge Air Solutions to retain the Cambridge name with our strong reputation for creating better working environments with high quality and efficient HVAC products. The Air Solutions term reflects our ongoing dedication to bring new HVAC solutions to the market.”

Along with featuring the name change at the Expo, Cambridge Air Solutions also discussed its E-series and ESC-series evaporative cooling solutions.

The ESC-Series evaporative cooling unit is a semi-custom fabricated air handler that can utilize direct evaporative cooling (DEC), indirect (IEC), or a combination of both indirect/direct (two-stage) evaporative cooling to meet specific usage and dimensional requirements. The evaporative cooling unit uses 100 percent outside air to provide tempered make-up air and building cooling. The E-Series direct evaporative cooling (DEC) unit is for commercial and industrial applications where it is engineered to provide cool, fresh, conditioned air for facilities.

“That product segment offers an opportunity to cool industrial facilities, manufacturing facilities with a technology that has a more sustainable energy footprint, lower operating costs, and lower energy usage,” said Eisenhart. He described the problem many manufacturers face — the challenge of cooling industrial facilities that generate massive amounts of internal heat or large exhaust loads. Mechanically cooling a facility, sometimes 20 times an hour, costs massive amounts of money and makes the process unsustainable.

Cambridge Air Solutions wants to change that, offering a cost-efficient option for cooling, Eisenhart said

“For us, it’s about making sure that our factory conditions match office conditions,” he said, describing Cambridge’s own factory conditions. “We are treating people as valuable contributors to our success. Not just throwing band-aids on the problem; people are really not happy working in those hot summertime industrial environments. And we’re going to change that.”

Cambridge Air Solutions said that this can present a solution to labor issues that some manufacturers face.

“They may be looking at it from an HR perspective,” Eisenhart said. “They may have high turnover going on, and they can’t find the right people to fill the production floor. Their best approach may be to look at a solution for people who are on the floor, and that’s what Cambridge’s evaporative cooling does.”

Eisenhart also showed excitement for the role that contractors can play in getting the solution to market. He explained that contractors are hardwired into the facilities that have challenges. With their service contracts and install relationships, they have the opportunity to offer these evaporative cooling solutions to facilities that are struggling with proper cooling.

Along with its evaporative cooling solutions, Cambridge Air Solutions created a software package that demonstrates the loss of productivity that results from internal temperatures that are too high for workers.

“We’ve created a software package that helps quantify the cost of doing nothing,” Eisenhart said. “The cost of doing nothing to really lower the temperature for indoor workers, costs something, and that’s lost productivity, more mistakes and safety problems, and high turnover.”

He is optimistic about the trajectory of cooling in industrial facilities.

“There is massive national momentum for improving workspaces beyond the office,” he said. “It’s growing by leaps and bounds. We’re certainly talking about it, and there’s been a lot of work on it, certainly out west. And I’ve even heard conversations about the maximum allowable temperatures and facilities as being set into codes.”

Cambridge Air Solutions has its eye toward the future.

“We’re taking the evaporative, semi-custom air handler technology and our direct fire technology, and we’re going to be putting out a product line that combines both,” Eisenhart said. “So if someone wants to do a ventilation-driven solution but also needs the most energy efficient heating technology platform, we’re going to offer them together in a newly certified platform.” The estimated date for that is 2022.

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