How many times during a ‘British’ summer do you enter a shop, restaurant, office or public transport to be instantly met with a wall of freezing cold air?
On a recent train journey from the Midlands to London, I was so cold I had to retrieve my jacket out of my suitcase to get warm.
Another example is when one of our employees went into a well known high street chain store and selected some items of clothing to try on but she was too cold to undress in the changing room to try them on – when she complained to the manager she was told “they had to cool the whole store down to keep the food hall cool!” Needless to say she left the store without making any purchases.
So it’s not just energy they are using and wasting needlessly, but they’re also losing Sales!
We have this obsession in the UK to cool our buildings down to our heating set point. Having a single set point is a very wasteful use of energy and it is so unnecessary with today’s building management control systems.
So why not apply at least 2 set points? – Heat up to say 19°C and cool down to 25°C.
Our own offices at Clarkson Controls have 3 set points – one for heating, one for natural ventilation and cooling and a third ‘high limit’ for the A/C to operate. So during our British Summer at around our low 20°C we are not really using energy!
The cooling set point should be dependent upon the outside temperature – the higher the ambient temperature the higher the set point.
Besides feeling more comfortable the risk of thermal shock is vastly reduced. The bit in the middle is FREE. – use IT to save IT!
