TLDR: Fontaine Stratton sawmill started with one SonicAire fan that sat in a box for a year, then achieved such success they expanded throughout the facility. The mill now uses standard fans for overhead areas and innovative AutoSweep units for hard-to-reach floor spaces, eliminating dangerous ladder work and allowing focus on other facility maintenance.
Key Points:
• First fan sat unused for a year—they “kicked themselves” after installation
• Expanded from one problematic trim saw area to multiple locations
• AutoSweep units handle high-dust floor areas with hard-to-reach spots
• Eliminated dangerous ladder work and air wand cleaning
• Entire facility cleaner as staff can focus on other areas
Transcript:
My name is Jed Whiting, I’m the general manager for Fontaine Stratton. We are a softwood lumber mill. We manufacture framing lumber used in the building of homes and businesses. We have a very good reputation for quality in our industry. Our focus is on customer satisfaction, and we’re able to produce high-quality lumber that goes up and down the eastern seaboard.
In the modern sawmill industry, technology and automation is how you succeed. We’ve gotten to the point now where the solutions for sawing the wood are done automatically by computers and by different systems. This enables us to efficiently and safely produce more lumber.
It’s been six or seven years, I think, that we first became aware of SonicAire. I was able to make a connection with Andy Dunn, who was our outside sales representative for this area. We originally purchased a few fans, and honestly, they just kind of sat in boxes for almost a year. I was down in Georgia at a trade expo, and there was a SonicAire booth there, and that kind of jogged my memory. So, we came back and we installed our first SonicAire fan at our planer mill on the trim saw. It was one of those situations where you were kind of kicking yourself for not doing it earlier, because it worked so well. And we were able to keep a problematic area clean, something that we’d struggled with for a number of years. So, we were very happy with the results of that. And so, moving forward, we added more throughout the mill in different high dust areas.
We found quickly that the dust buildup on the floor was hard to manage during production. After talking to Andy, we were able to come up with a solution. He actually came up, brought an engineer with him, and we looked at the different applications that we could possibly have for the AutoSweep. We currently have two of them in operation in a very high dust area with hard-to-reach spots, and the initial results are very encouraging.
Prior to the fans, we would do interval blowdowns with air wands, brooms, and things of that nature. We had some areas, mostly where we’ve got the fans, they might be every shift or at least weekly. It was a laborious task. With the fans, what we were able to do was minimize the actual man hours. Initially, of course, there was a lot of cleanup to do. But once we got that under control, we’re able to manage the dust much better. We don’t have people climbing on ladders, and we don’t have them stretching out and trying to get wands into rough to reach spots.
I think probably the biggest benefit would be the ability to keep the mill even cleaner because now they can focus on things that, possibly before, were pushed off as a lesser priority. So, not just the areas where the fans are installed, but the entire facility is cleaner because we’re able to focus on other areas.
I would say overall that my experience with SonicAire has been extremely positive. By and large, the fans are extremely robust, they’re very low maintenance, we’ve had very few issues with them. Don’t do like I did. Get them out of the box and put them up right away because they’re gonna be very happy with the results.
