Municipal Government Offices HVAC Controls
Client: Local Municipality’s Government Office Building
Location: Northeast Ohio, Akron/Cleveland, Summit County
Problem
A local, Northeast Ohio municipality contacted us about helping them to solve some issues that they had been experiencing with their heating and cooling systems in one of their government office buildings. They had been having problems getting consistent heating and cooling throughout the building, experiencing high maintenance costs, and paying high utility bills.
We found out that all of their heating and cooling problems were control related with the biggest issue being that several of the building’s make-up air units were set to bring in 100% outside air all of the time. This meant that even when 100% outside air was not required inside the building, the city was still paying to heat all of that cold outside air up to comfortable temperatures inside the space.
Complicating things further, the building had been set up with a proprietary building temperature control system that very few contractors could service.
Solution
After digging into the situation we determined that the best solution would be to reuse the existing heating and cooling equipment but completely re-control it.
We converted the entire control system to a Honeywell direct digital control system — an open platform, which increased the likely hood of finding contractors who could service it in the future.
We installed CO2 sensors that would monitor the CO2 levels inside the building. Using the readings from these sensors, the make up air units would now bring in just the necessary amount of outside air. This drastically reduced the amount of heating necessary.
All control of the heating and cooling system now runs through a single personal, desk-top computer and can be monitored across the Internet from our shop. In many cases we are aware of potential issues even before the client knows about them. Most can be solved without a service call.
Equipment
- All new Honeywell direct digital controls
- Existing heating and cooling equipment