Lennox provides comfort and control for Toyota dealership

Selling a car begins with putting the customer at ease, a goal that’s more easily achieved in a dealership with a relaxing, comfortable environment. Yet the constantly changing conditions of a busy dealership—open doors, large crowds, varied workspaces—make it a challenge to maintain indoor temperatures, humidity levels and air quality.

When Dustin Lewis, lead engineering designer for Image Technologies, Inc., began work on the new 60,000-square-foot. Toyota Scion of Scranton dealership, he understood the need for a high-performance HVAC system that would provide the owners with a high level of comfort control. Serving all of northeastern Pennsylvania, the new dealership is one of the largest in the region, with 25,000 square feet of showrooms, office space and conference rooms; the other 35,000 square feet is comprised of a service department, customer service drive-through and parts storage area.

The facility’s large size and wide range of heating and cooling needs demanded a robust system that offered both integrated and remote control capabilities, excellent energy efficiency, long-term reliability and humidity control. Those concerns were met by installing Lennox® equipment that included L Series® rooftop units and the L Connection® Network control system.

“Lennox was chosen for this project for the quality and reliability of the L Series packaged rooftop units,” Lewis said. “The standard features of the L Series units far surpass other manufacturers’ air conditioning systems. There is no comparison. Lennox has far surpassed its competition in matters of quality, reliability, durability and performance.”

Lennox provides a total comfort control package

Lennox National Accounts has worked with CBMC on several dealerships and has developed a comfort control package that includes L Series® units and the L Connection® Network with the Network Control Panel (NCP). For the Scranton project, 13 L Series rooftop units, ranging from three to 10 tons, were used for the office and showroom spaces.

L Series units provide complete comfort in a single, easy-to-maintain system. Designed for fast, easy installation and service, they are reliable systems engineered to provide comfort in commercial buildings like the Scranton dealership for years to come, with an energy-efficient, ENERGY STAR® qualified design that can help businesses control energy costs for low total cost of ownership.

Each L Series unit features an Integrated Modular Controller (IMC), which provides centralized control and fast, simple troubleshooting to reduce operational and service costs. The IMC allows the rooftop units to be integrated into the L Connection Network, which controls the entire system with a single device.

Developed by Lennox, the Network Control Panel (NCP) has a simple-to-use interface that allows the user to monitor and control temperature and humidity, program various schedules and make changes easily. With the addition of the NCP software package (which is included in the Lennox/CBMC standard offering), the operator can handle these tasks locally, or remotely from a computer at another location via a phone modem.

Responsiveness and results

“Lennox has also been an incredibly good company to do business with from a contractor’s and owner’s standpoint,” Lewis said. “From their national accounts sales personnel, to their customer support team and technical support staff, they have all been very responsive to the needs of the contractors and owners.”

The project represented the first Lennox control system installation for HVAC contractor Westland Heating and Air Conditioning of Cleveland, Ohio. Westland’s Zack Mitchell said they were also impressed with the superior quality of the L Series technology.

“The equipment is very reliable,” Mitchell said. “It’s by far the best-constructed unit out there. From a contractor’s standpoint, I was impressed with its user-friendliness. We definitely became a fan of the system based on the Toyota Scion project. In fact, the simplicity and operation of that particular system has helped us sell another project.”

Mitchell added, “As a contractor, some of our biggest concerns have to do with warranty issues or maintenance and operational concerns after installation. It’s been six months since the Toyota Scion project and we haven’t gotten a single call from the dealership. That’s unusual for such a large facility.”