We’ve seen an increased interest in Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) (aka Variable Refrigerant Volume or VRV) systems. Many view them as a panacea for a building’s HVAC needs. For building owners or managers with no prior experience with VRF/VRV units, we recommend considering the following...
Improvements to cooling systems are one of the most effective ways to increase your bottom line and meet sustainability goals, especially if your building requires a lot of cooling. Schools, data centers, offices, clinics, warehouse/distribution centers and others can make great candidates for capturing the...
We often speak of new construction commissioning as a quality assurance process for new buildings, beginning from conception and design and continuing through construction and into initial occupancy. Some see it merely as a necessity for obtaining LEED points and complying with energy code. Others...
As an energy efficiency consultant, my primary job is to recommend energy projects to my clients. More often than not, they base their decision to implement the project on its cost-effectiveness. For energy retrofit projects, establishing payback is fairly easy – the project costs $X,...
In heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, airflow reported at the variable air volume (VAV) box is actually a measure of total pressure. It gets converted into an airflow by a multiplier that is generated during testing, adjusting and balancing (TAB). This multiplier is...
We’ve recently seen an uptick in city and county building inspectors asking for mechanical acceptance forms prior to granting an occupancy permit. This trend demonstrates that perhaps code enforcement is catching up to code. As of the 2013 California energy code, effective July 1, 2014, mechanical...
I think that the energy efficiency industry needs a big wake-up call around changes that are coming to the world of refrigerants. In last week’s post, I discussed how these changes are going to hit the commercial refrigeration market. But the coming changes to HVAC...
SkySpark collects and stores data from any number of sources and provides an open analytics platform that can be programmed to automatically make sense of the data and provide insights on a building or a portfolio of buildings. This open platform can be customized to a...
I first encountered condensing boiler woes when conducting an energy audit for a winery which had retrofitted its conventional boilers to condensing boilers. Operating with a supply water temperature of 180°F and a return water temperature of 140°F, the boilers never operated in condensing mode...
What you don’t see or know about your building operation can cost you. We’ve found countless times, in virtually every building type, equipment or control system operations gone awry. Sometimes problems can’t be solved relying on data analysis. Today we’re going under the hood of...