50 years of getting to know the HVAC industry (Part 2)

Finding innovative fire safety and HVAC solutions is what drives us

A lot of the things we now know, we learnt together with our clients and industry colleagues. The highs, the lows, the innovations and the technical challenges made Calectro what it is today. And we may not have lived through periods of radical change like the industrial revolution, but Calectro has certainly seen its fair share of industrial transformations since that day back in 1969 when Karl Johan Pettersen founded the company.

One thing that has remained constant throughout our fifty-year history, however, is a dedication to our customers’ needs. Finding innovative ways to make people’s lives easier is what drove us here and what continues to drive us in everything we do.

Ventilation duct smoke detectors that make life easier for everyone

Take the UG-3 and UG-5 ventilation duct smoke detectors, for example. They mainly exist is because we wanted to make the installation process just a little bit easier. That’s why, in 1994, Calectro invented the Uniguard.

We didn’t stop there either. We wanted to make life easier for everyone, long after our Uniguards have been installed. So, in order to reduce the number of false alarms, unnecessary maintenance call-outs and smoke detector replacements, we added an automatic sensitivity adjustment function to every single Uniguard.

Another feature we added, because duct smoke detectors in residential buildings can sometimes be a bit of a nuisance, is the alarm delay function. This clever little feature double-checks that the particles the detector is sensing are, in fact, alarm-worthy smoke particles and not someone who is smoking or cooking a meal.

Being a better partner to our customers through R&D

One of the main reasons we began developing and manufacturing our own products was because we could see ways to be a better partner to our customers. We realized, for example, that if we were actually developing the products ourselves, rather than simply importing them from another manufacturer, we would be able to react faster and meet our customers’ unique requests better. Not only could we respond to minor last-minute requests for things like an extra relay or a special built-in function, but we would also be able to offer the option of smaller batch volumes.

Everything Calectro has developed over these past fifty years has been centered around our customers’ needs, from the very first Uniguard, with its innovative single-pipe venturi tube and flow optimized housing, to the OLED displays on our CALAIR air pressure regulators. As I wrote at the start of this article, finding innovative ways to make people’s lives easier is what drove us here and it’s what continues to drive us in everything we do.

I hope you enjoyed reading a bit more about Calectro’s journey, and soon to come you will be able to read chapters three and four of our 50th anniversary celebration article series. And, in case you missed it, read about how it all began in Part One: Leading the way in fire safety and building automation. If you have any questions or for more information, explore our website, give us a call or drop us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!