This months heat map is a bit of rarity – an example of what happens when you get HVAC right.
To get this impressive cross section of a London office our customers hung kittens on strings at several points along the ceiling. Each string had a number of kittens, spaced a meter apart, to give a vertical grid of temperature sensors.
The office is a converted Victorian industrial building, with a first floor and mezzanine. It houses about 80 employees for a professional services company, and keeps them at the right temperature with a comfort cooling system that delivers cold air through ducts at floor level.
So what are we looking at here? This is three days from July where the external temperature varied from 9°c to 25°c. Even though this office has a huge volume of open space and floor to ceiling in excess of 8 meters, the temperature on the first floor and mezzanine is well controlled. The mezzanine is a degree or two warmer, but rarely gets outside the comfort band.
Just to be controversial we’ve included a Saturday – and a hot one! – when the comfort cooling isn’t operating, to show the huge heat gain that comes through the ceiling and particularly the skylight along the roof ridge. This poses a big challenge for the cooling system at the higher level.
Looking at the view across the desks on the mezzanine for the same period confirms how well the cooling does at keeping employees warm – providing they don’t get too tall.
Is your cooling doing its job? Or do you have a concerns about where your heating ends up? Let us know about your most perplexing HVAC challenge and we’ll help you diagnose what is going on.