ECEX source your spares. More spare time for you.

Last week we started telling you about our spares service. If you haven’t tried it before, then you could be missing a great opportunity to save money.

OK, so it may be true that we’re not always going to be the cheapest on every item that you want, but there are two major reasons why you should get in touch.

Number One: We’ll always strive to be the most cost effective on the majority of items and consistently working to drive down our prices.

Number Two: We always aim to achieve the most flexible and rapid response to orders and delivery.

As preferred or approved suppliers for the majority of the UK’s largest M&E companies, chances are you’ll have no issues in placing an order with us either.

We understand that complicated supplier frameworks can sometimes restrict your ability to order the product you want. You might know what you want, where to get it from and when you need it, but this means nothing if they aren’t registered suppliers. We’re more than happy to order this for you for a minimal commission fee.

We want to make sure you get what you want, when you want it – Vee belts, belt pulleys (sheaves), filters, mechanical seals and gaskets, electric motors, bearings and a lot more besides.

Not sure whether we can help? Ask us.

For more information, go to www.ecex.co.uk

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Saving money on your spares is easier than you might think.

With the economy on its knees, the facilities and building maintenance industry is feeling the strain.

Cost saving has become a priority and where possible every effort is being made to shave the pennies from those already tight budgets.That said, engineers will always need to make repairs to serviced plant, replace belts and change bearings.

Unless you’re lucky, nearly all contracts are issued with some element of spare part responsibility and any purchases you make will affect the contract performance and profitability.

So how can you save money?

At ECEX we regularly purchase fans, filters, motors, pumps, mechanical seals etc. and as such, we know where to get spare components at the right price with the quickest delivery.

If you need spares and can’t work out who or where to source them from, contact the ECEX purchasing team to do the job quickly and efficiently for you.

We can supply:

• Vee belts
• Belt pulleys (sheaves)
• Filters
• Mechanical seals and gaskets
• Electric motors
• Bearings

Why waste your time hunting for things when we can do it for you?

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Fire stopping: Which materials do ECEX use?

Recently, we’ve talked a lot about fire stopping and the importance of installing the appropriate products in order to ensure that you and your colleagues are able to work in a safe environment. But what are those products?

We thought we would give a brief explanation of some of the key products that we employ when fire stopping on site:

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Sprayed Mineral Wools: A mixture based upon mineral wool, cement and other binders. This asbestos-free product offers varying fire resistance (Rf) according to the applied thickness on a substrate or carrying structure.

Rigid Vermiculite & Silica Based Boards – Non asbestos board made from mineral wool fibre with inorganic binders. Millboard has good mechanical strength and can be sawn, drilled or moulded when wet to suit particular applications.

Plasterboard: A layer of gypsum sandwiched between two outer layers of lining paper. Additives in the gypsum layer, along with varied weight and strength of the lining paper, give the finished board different resistance and applications.

Flame retardant and intumescent paints: These assist in the control of fire hazards by releasing a flame extinguishing gas.

Ablative or Intumescent Fire Batts: These are manufactured by spraying high-density fibre with a fire rated ablative coating.

Pipe wraps – Consist of flexible high-performance intumescent strips encapsulated in a polythene sleeve. They’re designed to be wrapped around plastic pipes that pass through masonry floors and walls. On exposure to fire the wrap expands rapidly inwards to squeeze the collapsing plastic pipe until the aperture is completely sealed.

Intumescent grilles, door seals and window seals: In the event of a fire, the intumescent material will expand to seal the gaps in under a minute.

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There are just a few of the materials you can employ to better protect your building from fires. Of course, there are many more you could use depending on the application and location.

For a free survey, please give our sales office a call on 01635 244 100.

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We’ve entered the ‘Inspiring Safety Awards 2012’!

Over the past few months, we’ve been working hard to raise the profile of building and workplace safety.

With our blog, http://ecexproblemsolved.wordpress.com we’ve been talking about many important subjects that are close to our hearts here at ECEX.

You may have noticed that fire safety has been a particular focus of ours. This is because of the potentially devastating damage that can be caused if not carefully managed. More specifically, fire stopping provides those within a fire stricken building with one thing – time.

An appropriate safety culture doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does have to be comprehensive. An oversight could cost lives.

Our aim is to raise the profile of good health and safety practice in the UK through sharing our many years of experience and knowledge.

Whether or not we win an Inspiring Safety award this year, we will continue to share a message that we’re proud of.

We’d be grateful if you could spread the message by sharing, liking or commenting on any one of our blog posts. It’ll only take a moment, honest.

Go to http://www.safetyinspirationawards.co.uk/ for more information.

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Sometimes great plans just don’t come together.

No matter how much planning you do, there are some eventualities you just can’t predict.

Take Carnival Corp’s Costa Concordia Cruise ship as an example. Despite the extensive procedures in place to ensure safe practice at all times, a few poor decisions can lead to catastrophic knock-on events.

The same can be said for fire stopping. Fire systems and their associated sensors are essential tools when protecting buildings from potentially disastrous accidents and sometimes, there’s just no accounting for what can happen.

As you may probably already know, smoke and/or heat sensors are placed all over buildings to trigger fire alarm activation, building evacuation and subsequent crisis management. These can be tripped accidentally and human error is undoubtedly the largest contributor. How many times has a sensor been tripped by burnt toast?

We recently completed some work for a major London client at a prestigious blue chip address. The type of work involved required the isolation of smoke headers to allow soldered joints to be fitted. Once the hot works were completed, all isolation was suspended.

Remember the part about eventualities you can’t predict?

Upon testing the pipework, a small leak was discovered which needed further repair. The test had to be completed under pressure and subsequently, water entered a smoke sensor.

Result: The fire alarm system was activated and the building evacuated. In future we will not remove isolation before testing.

Accidents are inevitability in our industry. They key is doing all you can to prevent them and managing them correctly as and when they occur.
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The big “twenty twelve”.

What does this year hold for us all?

Those of us who enjoy watching football will watch as our overpaid soccer stars take another plunge into obscurity during Euro 2012 in June.

The Olympics and Paralympics will undoubtedly hold centre stage in London (and nationally) between July and September.

The Queen will celebrate 60 years on the throne and is still going strong, much to Charles’ dismay. What does that mean for us?

We all get an extra holiday in June.

What else?

ECEX are concentrating upon some key safety issues this year. We’re well known for the quality of our fabricated steelwork structures which allow our customers to overcome major access problems (for more details, go to http://www.ecex.co.uk/a-s.asp).

Having supplied solutions to customers ranging from local leisure centres and smaller outfits to the likes of the Tate Galleries, Wimbledon, Queens Club and the British Museum (to name but a few), we are ideally placed to offer a solution to anything you can throw at us. Yes, that is a challenge.

It has become increasingly apparent that passive fire prevention is an item that is overlooked far too often. It is however, a critical element of the fire safety within a building.

ECEX are happy to survey and offer advice regarding the integrity of your compartmentalisation. (For more details, go to http://www.ecex.co.uk/firestopping.asp)

All you have to do is call.

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Uh Oh…

Due to a few technical issues, the ECEX blog may look a little unusual for the next few days.

Don’t worry, we’re on the case and it will be back to normal as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the full site is still fully operational; why not take a look at some of the other services we offer there. Who knows, we might surprise you!

View our full site.