Northshore manufacture and supply luxury yachts. Based in Chichester, their high standard of build has earned them an international reputation for quality. To satisfy increasing demand, a new 10,000sq ft boat building premises was needed. This opportunity would be used to improve production techniques and to give greater capacity for the future.
The compressed air system needed careful planning. Colin Bara, the Director of Northshore, contacted compressed air supplier Air Engineering Controls Ltd. A route for the pipework was planned and the advice was that a John Guest System should be employed.
Northshore were familiar with installing John Guest Speedfit plumbing on their yachts, so were confident they could install the air supply themselves.
One of the many benefits of the John Guest System is the ease in which connections are made. Just cut the pipe and push into a fitting. The internal arrangement within the fitting grips the pipe making it secure. An “O” ring then provides the leak proof seal.
A busy schedule meant that the installation needed to be carried out quickly and with as little disruption to production as possible.
The new route of the pipe included connections to power terminals for each work bay. As both fittings and pipe are lightweight, the pipe was easily fixed to the underside of raised walkways.
The installation was made up of a mixture of aluminium and Nylon pipe. Complex patterns were especially easy to make using Nylon pipe and long runs of straight pipe were in aluminium. Both come supplied in blue, as per the British Standard for compressed air, so there was no need to band or colour code the pipe.
Unique products offered by John Guest such as the Stop End provided the ideal solution for a temporary block to a pipe run, allowing the system to be used when needed. The Stop End could then be removed and extensions to the pipework could be made.
Over a period of 10 days each bay was connected up to the system. Colin Bara, Director at Northshore was very pleased with the flexibility that the John Guest System gave them “The connections were so easy to make and the ability to continue to work while the system was being installed was very important. I cannot see how this could have been achieved using anything other than John Guest”.
Air Engineering Controls believes that the installation would have taken at least twice as long had heavy galvanised pipework been used.