A.O. Reed 'Delivers' Comfort to California Post Office Locations

commercial air conditioning units in 17 post office locations across the San Diego and Los Angeles areas. The jobs represent $1.8 million in York equipment, part of an overall $5 million United States Postal Service (USPS) project.

“York launched the R-410A units sooner than some other manufacturers,” says Chris Cosgrove, the A.O. Reed project manager responsible for the U.S. Postal Service projects. “The big rush for the project was to make the buildings green, and the fact that the York brand offered more choices using R-410A certainly worked to their advantage.”

According to Cosgrove, a bid was packaged for each post office location, with consideration given to minimal downtime. The bid included equipment replacements and retrofit built-up systems that packaged the equipment to simplify changeovers. Equipment replacements included split-system heat pump and gas/electric units, York Affinity Series package units, Predator package units, and Magnum and Millennium package units. Each package was customized to upgrade the selected locations’ existing systems with high-efficiency, reliable equipment that also eliminated CFC refrigerants.

Diego Stefani, western regional sales manager for Johnson Controls-Unitary Products in Riverside, CA, noted that each post office had a different cooling system configuration. “There wasn’t one cookie cutter solution we could apply to all the buildings,” says Stefani. “Every building was different, but we were able to accommodate the unique requirements of each because we had a variety of products to choose from.”

“The Simplicity control responded to whatever was needed, like cooling at specific times of the day, and the building’s automation was built directly into the Simplicity control board, which allowed control of the units even when a post office was closed.”

A.O. Reed’s crews had to work in a fully-operational facility without affecting the mail processing operation. This required a quick and well-coordinated replacement process, as the facilities were spread out over a large area between San Diego and Los Angeles.

“All parts of the project were unique because we had to form custom adaptor crews for almost all the units,” adds Stefani, who was directly involved in reviewing the plans, equipment, and pricing with A.O. Reed.

“A.O. Reed chose York because it provided the largest selection of equipment using R-410A refrigerant, and it offered a longer warranty period of five years,” says Cosgrove, who is hoping A.O. Reed will win a second round of bids for 34 additional post office locations later this year.
A.O. Reed is Contracting Business’ 2007 Mechanical Contractor of the Year. Visit www.johnsoncontrols.com for additional information.