Why Certain Apartments in Your Building Are Always too Hot or Cold
In apartment buildings with centralized heating systems, maintaining comfort levels for the entire occupied space can be a frustrating and expensive undertaking. No one likes to be confronted with angry calls from tenants about continued issues with the temperatures in their unit that never seem to go away.
As makers of the worlds most sophisticated heating controls, Heat-Timer® expertise is often consulted when commercial HVAC companies are trying to solve these issues, especially in older buildings. The following is a great example of how tenant comfort can be proactively, and economically managed by a smart implementation of Heat-Timer Control systems.
How to stay ahead of the curve on Heating issues.
General Managers of both small and large apartment complexes face unique heating challenges. Being aware of them before a tenant complains and being able to resolve them quickly before they cost the complex money, has always been the goal of Heat-Timer controls.
Temperature instability in your buildings can be caused by many different issues, and the services of a truly capable commercial HVAC company is essential to analyzing and resolving them. In some cases, we have seen the breakdown and drift of control systems in older buildings forcing building engineers to actually make out complex schedules for manually changing the positions of various steam valves in the complex based on outside temperature. Not only is this a tremendous challenge, but ultimately it is doomed to fail in large installations, as well as wreaking havoc with the quality of life of building engineers and maintenance personnel.
In these cases, temperature variations in parts of the building can be caused by a lack of respect for the ambient outdoor temperature. Because this factor changes frequently and older control systems do not accurately incorporate this into boiler management protocols, you end up with situations where boilers are running too hot, too often. In other cases, boilers encounter “thermal shock” because they’ve been completely shut off for too long. These scenarios not only contribute to excess energy usage but greatly increase the need for boiler maintenance and more frequent, expensive replacement.
One Way to Solve the Heat Distribution Problem
An example solution for one of our clients involved implementation of our Heat-Timer SRC Platinum Steam Outdoor Reset Controls. The SRC regulates the amount of steam based on the current outdoor air temperature. It controls the amount of heat by continuously modulating the packless steam valve. By monitoring the outdoor air temperature, the SRC control can anticipate a heating demand increase or decrease and modulates the valve accordingly. The colder it is outside, the more steam that is allowed to enter the building’s radiation.
But perhaps the best part of implementing the Platinum control was its affect on the quality of life of the building maintenance crew. Heat Timer’s platinum series supports our Internet Control Management System (ICMS) which we call BuildingNet. This Internet Communication package allows you to monitor and adjust any Internet-ready Platinum Series heating control from any Internet browser. All the operating and recording software is contained within the panel. This means the control can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with Internet connection. Alarms are pre-configured to alert building managers before problems occur, allowing problems to be anticipated and solved from the golf course, instead of requiring a midnight visit to the boiler room.
Heat-Timer Wants to Solve your Energy Consumption Problem
The cost of upgrading to Heat-Timer Controls is generally dwarfed by the savings in fuel in the first month of operation for a large complex.
“The reduced boiler maintenance after the installation of the (Platinum Series) HWRs was enough to pay for the controls.” James Marsanico, General Manager
Contact Heat-Timer® today when you are done messing around with your building’s heating system. We’ll set you on the path toward big savings on energy costs.