Seeley International has showcased its newly-commissioned, purpose-built product testing laboratory at its South Australian factory, making it Australia’s only air conditioning and heating manufacturer with NATA accreditation.
Seeley International Founder and Executive Chairman, Mr Frank Seeley AM FAICD, said building and commissioning the state-of-the-art $1.5m laboratory reflected Seeley International’s commitment to remain this industry’s leader and stand behind its award-winning product performance claims.
“Seeley International takes great pride in offering a guarantee of its products’ performances and with every model undergoing very demanding testing and evaluation before being released to the market. This new testing laboratory will be working non-stop to ensure our products continue to perform at the highest industry standards,” Mr Seeley said.
“In addition to auditing current products, we now have opportunity to measure and validate the performance and efficiency of new products under varying real world conditions, and can precisely set a whole range of different test conditions, and measure incremental improvements in product performance,” he said.
“This laboratory is also a game-changer for our industry, because we can put competitors’ product and performance claims to the test, and conduct accurate benchmarking performance testing against Seeley products.”
Mr Seeley said the Meridian Test Laboratory was the culmination of more than 2 years of extensive planning, and offers a design flexibility that enables a wide range of cooling and heating products to be tested, including direct and indirect evaporative coolers, refrigerated air conditioners and heat pumps.
“Among the many benefits that this significant investment brings, we now have at our fingertips the ability to conduct rapid test programs with very short turnaround times, which means our product assessment and development times are more efficient than ever before,” Mr Seeley said.
“We also don’t have to wait until ambient temperature and humidity conditions are ideal, because the flexibility of this laboratory means we are able to create our own weather conditions, to accurately replicate weather anywhere in the world, at any time of the year,” he said.
From a technical perspective, the laboratory offers two test chambers with independent control of dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures, and three nozzle boxes that allow accurate measurement over a large range of airflows.
To enable testing of large evaporative coolers the laboratory also has two desiccant dehumidifiers to extract unwanted moisture from the test chambers, and is fully PLC controlled with electronic measurement and storage of all test parameters.
Appliance performance is calculated by measuring air conditions into and out of the appliance, airflow and power consumption.
The laboratory was officially opened by the Hon Ian Macfarlane MP, Minister for Industry, at Seeley International’s Lonsdale factory on Thursday October 16, 2014, with a plaque unveiled to mark the occasion.