Mr. Holm­ström, what are the chal­lenges of your job?

I install fans of different sizes, depending on how much air they’re to move. Replacing old fans with new ones has to be quick. It’s there­fore impor­tant for both me and my staff that the hand-
ling of fans is as simple as possible. The biggest ones weigh around 70 kilos, and roof open­ings are often too small. Conven­tional solu­tions involve using a crane.

Jan Holm­ström works as a venti­lation engi­neer in Västerås for HSB, a big company in Sweden. (Photo | Josefin Holm­berg)

Göran Ander­sson, sales manager at ebm-papst in Stock­holm (left), often supports him in measuring the roof top fans. (Photo | Josefin Holm­berg)

Jan and his staff install about ten roof top fans a year. (Photo | Josefin Holm­berg)

That sounds like hard work …

Yes, but we’ve now started using roof fans from ebm-papst in Sweden. They’re really easy to handle. If they don’t fit through the roof opening in one piece, you can simply take them apart and just put them back together again after­wards. This way we don’t need a crane. And they very rarely get anything wrong with them. Other manu­fac­turers can’t offer such quality. And the price is of course also fine — the whole package is just great.

“For me and my staff it’s impor­tant that the handling of fans is simple.”

Jan Holm­ström, venti­lation engi­neer at HSB

What’s the proce­dure or instal­la­tion and connec­tion of the fans?

For instal­la­tion itself we often only need a screw­driver. We’re replacing the fan with the same size, and ebm-papst fans are a real plug & play solu­tion. There isn’t actu­ally much to connect up. We can replace that sort of thing in max. four hours — often far quicker.
I also regu­larly use the precon­fig­u­ra­tion service for the fans. This means I give ebm-papst the neces­sary values — for example, the number of liters required per second. They then tell me the right size.

How many roof fans have you installed to date?

Jan is most happy about how easy handling the ebm-papst roof top fans is. (Photo | Josefin Holm­berg)

By now we must have installed some 40 or 50. We gener­ally fit ten or so a year. As we work on private homes, it’s not partic­u­larly regular. We some­times install fans in ten houses, and then some­times only two — you just can’t say. It’s around ten a year.

Do you often have to persuade the owner of the building?

No, some­times it’s the owners who come to us and say they need new fans. In some cases I also see fans are old when servicing them on site and then speak to the owner myself, telling them they could save such and such an amount of energy if they had a new one installed. An engi­neer from ebm-papst will often come and measure up the old fans. The engi­neer then writes a report detailing how great the poten­tial savings are. The report also shows when the invest­ment will have paid for itself.

BU: Motor: direct drive Green­Tech EC inte­gral motor
Power: 27 W — 2.75 kW
Size housing: 432 mm
Size lower frame: 592 — 992 mm
Air flow: up to 1,800 m³/h