Warehouse heating and ventilation

The typical warehouse problem

• At 10–16 m tall, the heat gathers under the roof while the picking area sits at +12 °C.
• Perimeter radiators reach 5 m from the wall at best, so the middle of the floor stays cold.
• Doors opening all day dump the heat in minutes.
• Racking blocks the air paths — and there is nowhere to run ductwork anyway.

Recommended models

Requirement	Model
Heating from a boiler house	OXA D
No heat network available	OXA ED, OXA GD
Staffed picking area needing summer cooling	OXA K
Ventilation to code	OXA FD

Worked example

A 5,000 m² warehouse, 12 m to the roof, water at 80/60 °C, design heat loss of 320 kW.

• OXA D-2 selected (65 kW at 80/60 °C) — 5 units including spare capacity.
• Layout: a 20 × 20 m grid; with a throw radius above 10 m the occupied zone is fully covered.
• Controls: one OXA-V2 terminal plus 4 OXA-T2 sensors, one per zone.

The investor’s view: warehouse heating economics

Heating is the second largest operating line in a warehouse after payroll, and the only one a single technical decision can cut by a quarter. On a let building, a steady +16…+18 °C in the working zone is what Class A tenants expect — and it feeds straight into the rent you can ask.

• Phased CAPEX: a decentralised scheme goes in stage by stage — heat the section you have let while the next one is still being built. A boiler house and ductwork cannot do that.
• A movable asset: the units come down and travel to the next site with the business. Unlike a heat main, they are not buried in the building.
• Destratification pays back in buildings 10–15 m tall within one to three heating seasons on the consumption difference alone (25–30 %, confirmed by US DOE field data).
• Redundancy by architecture: losing 1 unit out of 8 costs you 12 % of capacity, not the entire heating system.

Case study

An 8,400 m² warehouse complex, 12 m high: the existing unit heaters were replaced with 8 OXA D units. The temperature difference over the height fell from 14 °C to 2 °C, and the boiler house burned 27 % less gas over the heating season.