DEC 08

Nice post. I wish I had that chair. LOL.

Two examples:

My hospital where I work (Okinawa, Japan) has our wing so cold, that most of the docs run a space heater in our offices. We have to constantly apologize to patients for our cold hands. Recently, though, we all mounted a complaint to the facilities manager, and the temp has been raised to 72F from 69F. It's quite an improvement.
The hospital saves on A/C costs, and the staff and patients are more comfortable (with decreased grumbling and complaining!)

Case two:
My wife worked as a manager at Lowe's. This multi-acre voluminous warehouse store kept the Summer interior temps at a ridiculously cold temperature, where the employees had to wear sweaters even in the middle of Summer, and some customers would leave early due to being too cold (not good!)
Worst of all, the temperature of this Florida store was controlled from headquarters in North Carolina! Talk about inefficiency, waste and lost revenue and profits.

The number one complaint at large conferences isn't the quality of the speakers, it's usually the temperature of the room in which it is held.

There is a LOT of energy savings to be had by making commercial environments "right temp", where humidity and comfort are controlled by science, not some facilities bloke who is mistaken in thinking "Hey, it's Summer, why don't we crank the A/C to MAX" which makes everyone uncomfortable and costs corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in energy waste (passed along to consumers, of course), and increased greenhouse gases.

Cheers,
Doc

There have also be multiple studies that show higher productivity when office works can control their local enviroment.

I know they have something like this in the EPA building in Denver. There is a large plenum below the floor and each cubical has an adjustable floor vent. The people that I talked to said it worked very well.

Also, cold working conditions adversely affect the way people work. SO it's a good thing they made adjustments to that hospital's A/C system.

Office chairs can be designed to carry heat away from the sitter's body using coolant pipes. Similarly, desktop surfaces can be cooled by small pipes embedded in the surface which carry away excess heat.

The extracted heat can be converted into electricity and distributed into the electricity grid (for profit).

In winter, warmed coolant can be used to heat the desks and chairs without wasting heat warming the surrounding air.

This is a win win situation for offices and workers.

Individual user controlled HVAC systems are certainly the way of the future and it's nice to know that many new offices are taking the initiative to use them.

People are finally starting to see the long term business benefits of keeping their employees comfortable.

However, this kind of heating and cooling technology is extremely expensive as a retrofit to existing buildings if the entire space is not being gutted and remodeled.

We could start building in a way that saves cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. I know, that does not solve the problem of the millions of building around the globe, built in totally idiotic ways because "it looks great", but we could put pressure on politicians demanding better laws regarding insulation and design of buildings in the future, after all we have the technology, why not use it?
But hey, this is a small beginning, but still only solves a problem that shouldn't have been there to begin with.

I'm really convinced that A/C and in general temperature and humidity control in large buildings should get much more attention. For example it is well known that the demand for electrical energy peaks on hot summer afternoons. Right now, this means that energy costs more, because expensive and polluting power plants are turned on. However, if we want to use energy from renewables, we must smooth out the peaks in energy demand!
One clever way to do that, is to automate the response of A/C systems to energy price. See http://www.smartgridelectronic...grams.html.

This just means that sometimes the A/C will work at half speed to save money and to avoid peaks in energy demand. It is not true that this will result in a warmer work place. Sometimes it's just a matter of cycling the different A/C units of a building, they can run according to some schedule and therefore avoid a huge peak in energy demand.

Everyone should try to locate the thermostat away form drafts, direct sunlight & mechanical equipment. I follow this so suggest you.

I’m trying to get the people at the school where I work to switch over to more environmentally friendly things. Does anyone know if something like this internet fax would actually help anything at all? I know we’d save on paper, but would it help with energy too? Any info is much appreciated.