In Old Buildings, Look for the Catch 22s

Posted by in Tips, Tricks & Discoveries on May 21st, 2011 | 0 comments
In Old Buildings, Look for the Catch 22s

Pursuing energy efficiency in old buildings with tiny budgets demands improvisation and creativity; that’s one reason why we think it’s an ideal environment for experimentation and discovery.  Below are some discoveries that we’ve made along the way, which might be useful in other projects:

Working in large old buildings guarantees a certain number of surprises.  Often there have been many different generations of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems installed over the history of the building.  Renovations have changed the shape of the space; the whole facility may be used for a different purpose; nobody really knows how the system works.
Try to discover where all the heating, cooling, and air-handling units are, which are working, and how they are controlled. You’re likely to find some Catch-22 situations which could actually be easy wins.
We’ve found …
  • Radiators installed on the original ceiling of a room, above a newer drop ceiling (result: none of the heat reached the room below).
  • Heaters and air conditioners wired so they are turned on together (result: they cancel each other out.)
  • A small building with a large oil heating bill, which was blamed on poor insulation; in fact the insulation was not bad, and the big bill was due to pilferage.
Most common but easiest to solve problem: thermostat is wrongly wired, set incorrectly or in the wrong place. We’ve found thermostats inside a boiler room (result: never enough heat) and thermostats outside the building entirely (result: too much heat).

 

 



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