Is Your Building Ready for Summer? Top 6 Tips to Be Prepared.

Visitors set up inside circles designed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus by encouraging social distancing. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

With a wintery February and March this 2021, it’s almost hard to believe that Spring and Summer are right around the corner! In addition to continued pandemic conditions across the globe, the Farmer’s Almanac predicts that this Summer in the DC Region “will be hotter than normal, with the hottest periods in early and mid-June, early to mid-July, and early to mid-August”. Here are our Top Tips to make sure your buildings are ready.

Source: Farmer’s Almanac [https://www.almanac.com/weather/longrange/zipcode/20001#]

Our Top 6 Reminders to be prepared…

1. Inspect & Tune those chillers, towers, heat pumps and associated cooling loops/systems.

   Top tip: Don’t forget the filters! As a COVID prevention strategy in occupied spaces, many building owners and managers have increased the efficacy of in-unit filtration. This is excellent for indoor air conditions, but can require more frequent media changes and cause additional strain on units during peak cooling conditions. Be sure to keep filters clean & consider MERV-13-equivalant (or better) active filtration as an alternative to passive filters which may place too much strain HVAC systems, energy bills, and operating personnel.

2. Check building controls for proper changeovers, temperature resets, space pressurization, and safeties.

   Your automation system serves as both the brains of your building and much of the brawn behind your COVID mitigation strategies (maintaining temperature & humidity levels, optimizing ventilation rates, ensuring proper pressurization strategies, and alarming when things aren’t quite right). Implement additional Air Quality protocols as prudent and be sure that changes implemented solely for the pandemic are easily reversed.

3. Evaluate, refresh, and retrain on Contingency Planning (including those for Inclement Weather and Mechanical System Failure)

   Winter isn’t the only season with storms that cause outages, with peak Summer temperatures always placing extreme stress on building systems and larger electrical grids. Having a plan in place for immediate remediation can minimize risk, reduce downtime, and even reduce the cost of returning services to normal.

4. Inspect for & Correct areas of possible air and water infiltration.

   Did you know that Water & Air Infiltration are the #1 cause of Indoor Environmental Quality issues in buildings? Eliminating unwanted entry of these fluids helps to not only improve air quality, but also prolong the life of building infrastructure, and—in many cases—even reduce energy consumption.

5. Assess your electric purchasing strategy.

   Shoulder seasons are great times to address energy procurement. Substantial savings (and risk mitigation) can often be found through the implementation of an intelligent energy procurement strategy. Save money by purchasing power at lower rates and consider supplementing some (or all!) of your power purchases with renewables like wind & solar.

6. Retrain your team on summer safety.

   Safety is a critical component in ensuring healthy & happy team members and building occupants. Train and train again on disease transmission prevention, dehydration, heat stroke, sun exposure, and other key safety topics to keep your team firing on all cylinders.

Have questions, need help, or just want to make heat wave predictions over a (perhaps virtual) cup of iced coffee? Our team is here to help tune up controls, maintain & repair building systems, identify & address energy efficiency improvements, assess utility rates, assemble (and implement) cooling & power contingency planning & emergency preparedness strategies, obtain electric efficiency rebates & incentives, and much more.