No -- it's not a prop airplane. It's a new, larger, faster Airform inflator!
by Freda Parker
September 11, 2007
Thar she blows!
"It sounds like the prop on a Cessna 152," said Randy South at the premier use of South Industries' new fan.
That was June 27, 2007. Randy and his son Andrew, along with 500 others, were witnessing the inflation of the Airform for the new facility at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado. This was a project of South Industries, Inc. of Menan, Idaho, a company owned and operated by Randy and his three sons, Andrew, Derek and Joshua.
The Airform for that Monolithic Dome church was huge. It had a diameter of 232 feet and would reach a height of 65 feet,
But despite its size, it inflated, without a hitch, in just 45 minutes. Reason: South Industries' new fan, capable of pumping air into an Airform at the rate of more than 45,000 CFMs (cubic feet per minute).
"If we had done it the old way," Andrew said, "that inflation would have taken more than two hours."
He described the new fan as a "high-volume, lower-pressure, axial fan that acts and sounds like an airplane propeller."
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Inflating an Airform can be risky
According to Andrew, purchasing and pioneering the new fan was Randy's idea -- one prompted by an Airform-inflating mishap.
It happened during the inflation of the Airform for a 298' x 175' Monolithic Dome coal storage facility, being built by Dome Technology of Idaho Falls, Idaho and South Industries, for ADM in South Clinton, Iowa. But, in reality, it was a mishap that usually threatened an Airform inflation and had happened before.
Although Dome Technology chose a calm morning to inflate, during that four-and-a-half-hour process, a sudden burst of wind whipped the Airform, and it got caught and ripped.
That got Randy thinking about minimizing the high-risk, inflating time by using a fan specifically for inflation.
Andrew said, "Randy wanted a fan that delivered a lot more air and got the Airform up faster to avoid bad situations. So Randy and David (South, president of Monolithic) began researching.
"And, in a way, they went back to their beginning, when they first built domes for potato storage," Andrew continued. "They went to an agricultural ventilation company and found a fan they liked.
"Our old fans run at about 9,000 CFM. This new one does a whooping five times better!" Andrew concluded.
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