Background Information on Ambthair Services

Ambthair Services was established in 1982 and specializes in the design only or design and installation of mechanical building services. In the past 10 years as well as the more general mechanical services the company has specialized in a number of areas which includes the application of ventilation and air conditioning in studios and auditoria, or other quiet environments.

Ambthair Services has designed and designed and installed air conditioning and ventilation for indoor environments for many well known clients in the U.K., Europe, India and Taiwan. The company's approach is to drive down the costs associated with ventilation and air conditioning for indoor environments. The company believes that mass produced equipment available for the large world wide ventilation and air conditioning market may be applied to most situations and in this way drive down capital costs rather than the use of bespoke equipment, which as well as increasing capital costs often increases the lead in time to contracts.

The performance of the world's major manufacturers mass produced equipment, surprisingly, varies considerably with respect to cooling / heating capacity and for static pressure and noise levels in particular. In this respect, therefore, a constantly updated database of performance and noise levels of all available mass produced equipment is essential.

Ambthair Services therefore is constantly updating and comparing manufacturers equipment in order to obtain optimum selection and capital cost advantage for their clients. This has meant on many occasions that capital costs for projects have been less than half that of their competitors.

The company also strongly believes that the predilection by many of its competitors for bespoke equipment also has the effect of over-complicating systems which quite often results in unnecessary high running costs, maintenance costs and will possibly be less reliable than the mass produced equipment, the latter of which is far more reliable than it has ever been.

However this enthusiasm to use mass produced equipment is not in any way compromised by the most recent developments in ventilation and air conditioning which includes the use of displacement ventilation, computational fluid dynamics (C.F.D.) and a variety of different air distribution terminals including socks. Ambthair Services Ltd. monitors and has applied these advances in concert with mass produced equipment.

The company believes of course, where appropriate and after due consideration, bespoke equipment has to be used and in these situations works closely with manufacturers to obtain optimum performance, reliability and the best possible guarantees for the client.

M.J. Hardy, C.Eng, M.C.I.B.S.E., M.I.W.Soc.

Mike Hardy is the Managing Director and founder of Ambthair Services and has been designing and overseeing building service systems for over 30 years. He was originally trained at G.N.Haden Ltd. (now Haden-Young Ltd.) as a student apprentice, and after training and successfully passing the qualifying exams required for membership of the Institute of Building Service Engineers spent several years in Africa designing and overseeing, in particular, air conditioning systems. He says there have been many changes in the ventilation and air conditioning industry over the years, the most important of which is the reduction of costs in air conditioning due to mass production. This, together with the amazing improvement in relliability of equipment has made air conditioning accessible to most companies and also for the fast expanding domestic market.

It is his view that there are many misconceptions about air conditioning, the most prevalent of which is that it is a 'luxury' or 'non-essential.' He says it is an absolute necessity in pretty well every industry you can think of, even more so now with the requirement for 'clean room' conditions for precision industries.

Mike Hardy says that the air conditioning industry has recently received a bad press which is quite out of proportion to the benefits of the industry. The main criticisim has been the use of C.F.Cs which are now being phased out. The more benign H.C.F.Cs such as R.22 will - and are - being replaced with H.F.C.s with zero ozone depletion potential (O.D.P.) and very low global warming potential.

With regard to Legionnaires' Disease this is always quite mistakenly associated with all air conditioning systems. The problem was caused by wet cooling towers, he says, of which there are fewer and fewer installed. Although they have to be used on very large installations, they are now designed by the manufacturers to be safer. This, together with the exacting regime of biocide treatement now required with towers means there are fewer and fewer outbreaks of Legionnaires' Disease.

All in all he says the industry is in great shape and the phenomenal growth rate over the last two decades demonstrates that. With the industry set to grow even further over the next millenium he is convinced it will become more accessible to everyone.

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