Changing lives one paw at a time

Animal shelter finds the perfect Hannay reel for a brand-new facility

Posted on 06/08/2021

Louisville Metro Animal Services (LMAS) is an authority in animal welfare, creating and preserving a safe and humane community for animals in the Louisville metro area. LMAS strives to eliminate the euthanasia ofadoptable pets though education, community engagement, enforcement, and leadership. They make every effort to secure loving, permanent homes for abandoned and homeless pets in their community through free and donation-based adoption programs. On average, LMAS receives more than 7,500 animals annually, offering the largest selection of adoptable pets in the region.

By 2016, LMAS was in desperate need of a new facility. Their original building dated all the way back to 1966. It was outdated and lacked the space needed for their growing operations. After two years of planning and research, the LMAS team began work on a new state-of-the-art animal shelter in the summer of 2018.

Ozzy Gibson, LMAS Director, planned every aspect of the new shelter, right down to the hose reels. In their original facility, LMAS had manual-rewind reels with up to 100 feet of hose. Employees would have to hand crank and drag the hose around, causing it to get caught on things. When he visited a shelter in Columbus, Ohio, to see their set-up and find inspiration, Gibson saw Hannay spring washdown reels installed in their facility. 

He was so impressed with the construction and versatility of the reels he wrote down the serial numbers and told his contractor to order them.

When he went to check on the shelter’s construction progress, he noticed that the reels installed were from a different manufacturer and did not meet the specifications he needed. “I said we are going to test out this hose reel. What we noticed right off the bat was that when we went to pull side-to-side, the bottom part of the bracket started to bend. I told our contractor: ‘Look, this isn’t what we are looking for. Please take that out and let’s go buy the Hannay hose reels,’” Gibson explained.

Now there are 36 Hannay spring washdown reels serving the new LMAS facility which opened on October 21, 2019. The new shelter is 33,000 square feet, allowing space for 235 animals, climate-controlled kennels, a state-of-the-art surgical center, and a veterinary office on site.

“By having Hannay hose reels, I save roughly 35 minutes a day of my employees dragging and wrestling with the hose reel. Now I can repurpose their time to do animal enrichment, so that we can save more pets. I love our Hannay reels because they get the job done right,” said Gibson.

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Industries: Industrial

Applications: Pressure Wash / Washdown

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