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Your Building is Not Too Old, For New Technology

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Owners of older apartment buildings and complexes sing a common lament: “there’s only so much I can do in my old building, I can’t afford to rip the walls down to install new heating or distribution components, no matter how efficient they make things.” The thing is, that’s yesterday’s news. Modern heating controls can certainly run your high efficiency replacement boilers better, and more efficiently. But in 2019 the controls, room sensors, and valves can all be deployed and controlled wirelessly, putting a high efficiency, lower energy consuming building into your future too. Consider the following example of how a Heat-Timer® Platinum series control system, in the hands of a skilled commercial HVAC crew , can make your old building a deeper shade of green. Problem Statement Common to older apartment buildings like the Executive house in Albany NY, are problems associated with manual control of one or more boilers and even many different mechanical rooms. H...

Domestic Hot Water Solutions for Hotels and More

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For hotels, motels, office buildings and other buildings with large hot water demand, domestic hot water systems must deliver water that is always bacteria free, and at the right temperature, even during peak periods. Additionally, increased environmental awareness and sound economics is driving the need for more efficient and durable domestic hot water heating solutions than in the past. Part of the solution to a better DHW system is certainly the boiler. Traditional direct-fired storage water heaters can have efficiency ratings in the low 60% range as compared to 90% or more for modern condensing boilers. Depending on where they are, these heaters can last less than 5 years due to hard water mineral build-up, adding another burden to our landfill and recycling capabilities. Creating a Domestic Hot Water System for the 21 st Century It may go without saying but we’ll say it anyway: when designing a commercial DHW system you first want to contact a commercial HVAC p...

The Real Cost of Heating Controls

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According to a new report from Pacific Northwest Group, the average commercial building spends over 50% of its energy costs on HVAC. And in the cooler northern areas of the country, most of that is certainly related to heating costs. Depending on the size of your facility, this can be thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of dollars every month. Despite this there is often reluctance for building managers, apartments, schools and universities to undertake the cost of reworking their heating system to use some form of an Energy Management System . Large institutions budget carefully and well in advance and so the foresight to spend the upfront dollars is often not there. These professionals understand that boiler efficiency is part of cutting energy costs but the question is often “how much will I save”. Depending on your situation, that can be a hard question to answer, and an important one when considering the timeframe for payback on an HVAC system control upgra...