As the seasons change, so do the needs of your building. Now that thousands of building owners in the State of Colorado are more closely tracking their energy usage intensity (EUI), it is important to be proactive with the changing weather and extreme cold days that are ahead.
Now is the perfect time to prepare your environmental equipment as we are entering the shoulder season to test operation in both cooler and warmer outside temperatures. Whether your building is newly constructed, recently renovated, or has existed for several decades, being properly prepared for the coldest, snowiest days ahead is part of an operations and maintenance plan that helps ensure equipment meets its useful life expectations. Equipment that operates optimally and as expected will help building owners maintain EUI scores.
Take Advantage of the Shoulder Season
Lately, the mornings and nights have been cooler while the midday sun has maintained a sweltering heat. These are the perfect conditions to test your building’s environmental equipment before winter weather arrives.
The significance of checking equipment during a shoulder season is to be able to check the equipment during milder weather conditions. Testing in mild weather conditions reduces the risk of both occupant discomfort and overwhelming your equipment. It is also necessary to have cold weather to complete testing sequences fully.
If equipment is non-operational or requires maintenance, it is better to have time to fix heating issues before the colder temperatures arrive, as this helps avoid complaints that the building is too cold, or worse, extended closures due to insufficient heat.
On-Site Equipment Assessments and Testing
An important action to take as the season changes is to meet with your staff to discuss weather changes and the effects it will have on equipment. Create and review a plan with scenarios for when the heat is anticipated to be active, as well as a preventative maintenance schedule. The beginning of a new season is the perfect time to discuss what went well last year, as well as any issues that should be addressed. A maintenance record shows potential vulnerabilities to systems and gives better insight for maintaining the equipment to ensure it lasts up to or longer than its anticipated useful life.
A best practice is to do an equipment walk for visual and auditory inspections: Clear debris, check for loose fittings, observe liquids, and note any visual changes, as well as listen to the equipment during operation to determine if there are any new sounds. This process is an essential part of properly preparing the equipment for cooler weather.
Before starting up your newly installed heating system for its first run through winter, you are advised to test the system to ensure everything works as expected. The below questions are what engineering teams will be looking to test and potentially adjust:
- Are outside air temperature lockouts in place and do they need adjustment?
- Do space heating and cooling temperature setpoints require adjustment?
- Have annual furnace and boiler inspections been scheduled?
- Are economizer dampers and controllers fully functional to take advantage of free cooling?
- Are heat trace and snowmelt systems ready for the first snowfall?
Low- to No- No-cost Equipment Tune-Ups
Conducting a thorough retro-commissioning study for your building can identify many non-obvious issues that have reasonable solutions and that result in increased energy efficiency. Many of these solutions have a simple payback of 0.5 to 2 years and are a worthwhile strategy to reduce your building’s EUI.
Over time, settings might be manually adjusted without being readjusted or the needs of the building change. As various components of a system age, there are times that systems require a little more attention than a few tweaks or replaced filters to achieve optimal performance. Undergoing a retro-commissioning study during the shoulder season can make many of these issues apparent when they might otherwise be missed during regular operations throughout the year.
Retro-commissioning services can provide a plan to achieve low- to no-cost actions to reduce energy use and improve occupant comfort. Having an expert confirm features of the building automated system are functioning as desired and that damper positions are where they should be to maintain optimal indoor air quality, without bringing in too much cold winter air, are a common result of these types of services.
Maintain Building EUI
Staying ahead of known temperature changes helps to flatten the building’s energy use intensity (EUI) because it is a proactive measure as opposed to being reactive. Adjusting setpoints and maintaining equipment avoids drastic changes to counter heating and then cooling a space, only to maybe heat it again. This waste of energy will increase the building’s overall EUI average as daily temperatures fluctuate by 40 degrees or more.
Understanding problematic equipment is important to lowering the building’s EUI. Utilizing seasonal change to test and study environmental equipment can provide a holistic overview of how heating, cooling, and other equipment operate. Observing system operations during shoulder seasons can bring issues to light because you are witnessing performance during both cold and hot conditions in the same day or week.
Get Your Building Ready for Cold Weather
Ready to optimize your building’s energy efficiency? Contact us for a retro-commissioning study to identify low-cost, high-impact solutions.