Southern Air builds Berglund Toyota

Southern Air helped Berglund Toyota open their doors to a newly constructed car dealership in Lynchburg, Virginia. Moving from an aging facility, the new Berglund Toyota offers their customers new and used Toyotas for sale, full-service maintenance, a beautiful two-floor showroom and large service lounge. Customers may relax on leather couches watching flat screen TVs drinking free coffee while they wait for their vehicle’s service or shop around the polished showroom.

This new 34,043 square-foot facility boasts a large showroom for brand-new released vehicles, two large service bays and a washing station. Avis Construction Company from Roanoke, Virginia, was the project’s general contractor who bid out the plan and specification build to mechanical contractors in the area. The job was appealing to Southern Air’s Special Projects group for many reasons, one being its proximity to the headquarters building. Many other mechanical contractors submitted bid packages and even though drawings were not considered 100% complete, Southern Air won the mechanical HVAC and plumbing contracts for Berglund Toyota.

Plan and specification builds differ from design-builds. Plan and specification is when the owner brings the desired building design to their construction teams. Design-build is just that; you design and you build it. Many businesses, like car dealerships, utilize their design teams who have engineered the same building multiple times. They have their plans in place, they just need the right construction crews to turn blueprints and dirt into a 72° white marble floor showroom showcasing the new 437 horsepower i-FORCE MAX hybrid powertrain 2023 Toyota Tundra.

It’s no small task to take a vision in the mind and an empty dirt lot and make it reality. But that what people working from all trades do every day.

Changing oil every 3,000 miles will keep the service center at Berglund Toyota very busy. This means they needed a solution for the vast amount of dirty, used oil and other discarded motor fluids they will be disposing of on a daily basis. Aside from putting in bathroom fixtures and running sanitary lines, this was a job for Southern Air’s plumbers.

This team installed waste oil furnaces and a storage tank for the waste oil. Waste oil furnaces are forced hot air heating systems which convert used petroleum fluids into free heat for its building. This is also an eco-friendly means of recycling waste oil rather dumping it. The spent motor oil running these waste oil furnaces are fed by small copper lines stemming from a storage tank.

Our plumbers were also responsible for installing a perfectly straight, 120-foot trench drain right in the middle of the service bay. Keeping the drain aligned correctly proved challenging during the concrete pour. Our tradespeople drove angled rebar into the ground at key locations wedged against the side of the drains to keep them straight. They were also responsible for several eyewash and safety showers throughout the garage areas.

Congrats Southern Air Special Projects construction teams on another great project!