About Mason Industries

It is an unbelievable sixty years since the writer, Harold Harris and Tony Slota started Mason Industries with Pat Lama joining ten years later. Unfortunately, both Harold and Tony are gone and Pat retired. So at the young age of ninety-three, I continue to run the company with Doug Valerio’s help. Sixty years of continuity and ownership.

We offer our thanks to every contractor and manufacturer who forms our customer base. We believe they favor us because of the practicality of our designs and lower installed cost when product works the first time. We stand behind what we sell as no other competitor. We thank our whole representative organization for their hard work, professionalism, integrity and loyalty. We look forward to serving you.

HISTORY

1945

It has been my pleasure to serve on vessels driven by 3 cylinder reciprocating steam engines, which powered our Liberty Ships just as they did in World War I to Twin Diesel Nordberg engines, steam turbines and perhaps most interesting of all, an opposed piston diesel engine with 36 inch diameter pistons and a 6 foot stroke that ran at the ship’s screw speed of 92 RPM. It was so large you could walk into the crank case to check the bearings and cross heads. As ship’s machinist, I worked with lathes, milling machines, drill presses, shapers and hydraulic presses as well.

After discharge, I returned to CCNY, got my degree in Mechanical Engineering and five years later, my license as a New York P.E.

1948 was a terrible year for engineers, and jobs were hard to come by. One thing I knew was that I did not want to become a “salesman,” and needed to find something that was hands-on rather than only design.

1968 - ASHRAE LECTURE

Until a very few years ago the vibration isolator recommendations for air conditioning equipment were more a matter of tradition than science. It was well established in the industry that cork was best under high speed equipment such as pumps and centrifugal compressors, rubber mountings ideal for fans and air handling equipment, and spring mountings the logical choice for reciprocating equipment such as compressors. These selections were so well established that the application engineer found his decisions concerned a choice of materials within the categories, such as double rather than single deflection rubber mountings. Cork materials were manufactured and sold in natural form and also in precompressed sheets. The natural form of cork was white and the precompressed sheets were brown. One material really worked no better than the other but a decision had to be reached on which color to use. For all the difference it made, decorator colors should have controlled.

This medieval method of engineering served its purpose as it introduced the vibration control industry to this country. Oddly enough installations were successful, at least financially, as long as the equipment was installed in the basement or on grade; as long as the HP involved was small; as long as the public was not too demanding, and as long as building structures followed the pattern established in the early nineteen hundreds when floors were thick, spans were short and the curtain wall probably didn’t exist.

1971

When we opened our doors in 1958, we rented 3,000 square feet. Our catalog was a black pasteboard cover enclosing six pages and held together with brass fasteners. However, we had copied nothing and this hands-on originality and enthusiasm was greeted with open arms. In a short time we built platforms over the whole shop to gain more production space. Since our foreman could not pronounce “mezzanine,” they were referred to as “mezzerines” from then on. We broke through the factory wall and gained another adjacent 4,000 square feet, and soon filled that with “mezzerines” as well. (Incidentally, our original capitalization was $24,000. So how we managed is a story unto itself.)

Around 1968 we pulled wagons down the street and moved ourselves into a 30,000 square foot building and sure enough that was soon covered with “mezzerines” too. We then broke through the walls again and displaced an adjacent body repair shop until we ran out of “mezzerines.”

1981 - New Office in NY

In 1981 we bought and moved into our present 60,000 square foot headquarters, and yes, it is now full of “mezzerines.” We rent an additional 50,000 square feet in two buildings nearby to house our tremendous inventory and there is an additional 150,000 square feet Overseas.

The New York and Los Angeles offices and Engineering staff number approximately eighty people of which twenty-one are engineers, about half are licensed. With all production workers included, we employ approximately three hundred people.

We are more than capably represented by about eighty firms within the United States and around the world.

2004

Up until the age of sixty-five I was still installing product, so virtually every design is still a problem solver with many at the request of seismic or acoustical engineers to fill their needs in a new area.

Never for a moment do I believe that we could have done this without the tremendous support provided by the professional community that consist of thousands of HVAC engineering and architectural firms as well as acoustical consultants. We have addressed hundreds of ASHRAE Chapters and many national meetings. Without their recognition of our constant effort to improve the technology and suggested specifications, we would still be in that 3,000 square foot 1958 space, and probably without the “mezzerines.”

We also offer our thanks to every contractor and manufacturer who form our customer base. We believe they favor us because of the practicality of our designs and lower installed cost when product works the first time. We stand behind what we sell as no other competitor. We thank our whole representative organization for their hard work, professionalism, integrity and loyalty.

2006

A vertical loop has always been a very useful and popular hose configuration and is still used in small diameters. If the radius is generous and considerably larger than the minimum bend radius. (i.e.: Hose forced into an arc less than the minimum bend radius takes a permanent set.) The configuration can move in many interesting ways as sketched.

The degree of motion is dependent on the diameter, length of live hose and theradius. Hoses that are more flexible because of more corrugations per foot, will accept greater displacements for a given configuration.

It is not practical in the larger diameters as the bend radii become large and the configuration takes too much space, because of what is lost to the semicircle at the bottom. Typical bend radii are as follows for intermittent flexing. A fixed bend could be tighter.

As a 6” diameter hose would have a 56” diameter semicircle at the bottom, plus the vertical legs, you can see the problem.