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Offices, R&D units, laboratories and workshops
Almost every building on this corridor has at least one room whose problem is equipment rather than people, and it is nearly always the room nobody measured.
Every unit found, and every room with a load in it
Every unit located and identified by model and serial number, matched to the area it actually serves, its measured condition recorded, and dead or abandoned plant marked as dead. Then the readings: airflow and static pressure, refrigerant charge, economiser operation, filter condition and pressure drop, belt and bearing condition, condensate, and combustion on gas heat.
And a second list that most surveys skip: every room with equipment in it, what that equipment is producing in watts, and whether anybody has ever specified a temperature for it. On a building full of test benches and racks that list explains most of the complaints.
Where a room turns out to have a genuine uptime requirement, we will say so in the survey and recommend a specialist rather than quoting it. That happens perhaps twice a year and it is always better said early.
Four kinds of building, four different problems
Office suites
Usually zoning rather than capacity: one thermostat governing a floor with glass at one end and interior rooms at the other. We measure the zones separately at the hour the complaints happen. Then we ask which rooms have equipment in them, because that is usually where the thermostat is not.
R&D units and workshops
Here the heat is made inside the building by the work itself, and extraction at the source beats cooling the room every time. Radiant heat near a hot process is its own measurement. Where extraction is dealing with fumes or particulates rather than heat, that is an industrial hygiene question and we will say so rather than take it on.
Laboratories
We will do the comfort side and the general ventilation, and we will be clear about the limit: fume hoods, containment, pressure regimes and anything that has to be certified belong to a laboratory ventilation specialist. A great many small labs are being served by a comfort contractor who has never said that out loud.
Rooms with racks in them
A cupboard with switches, a comms room, a small server room. Mostly these are a straightforward load calculation and a ductless head that runs all year, and mostly they have been left to the building system, which shuts down at night and at weekends. That last detail is the whole problem in about half the cases we see.
What we do in premises
- Written plant survey
Every unit found, identified, measured and mapped, plus a list of every room with an equipment load in it.
- Planned maintenance
Scheduled visits, the same readings each time, written specifically enough that a lease obligation can be shown to have been met.
- Repair and replacement
Repair diagnosed and costed first. Replacement sized from the load the building carries now.
- Dedicated cooling for equipment rooms
Ductless systems that run independently of the building schedule, sized from the equipment’s own figures.
- Extraction and ventilation
Heat taken at the source where a process is making it, measured before and after.
- Zoning and controls
Sensors where the complaints are and schedules matched to the hours the building is really used.
Work we turn down
| We decline | Who it belongs to |
|---|---|
| Data rooms with uptime requirements | Redundancy, monitoring, alarms and a maintenance regime built around never stopping belong to precision cooling specialists. We will say so at the first visit. |
| Fume hoods, containment and laboratory pressure regimes | Laboratory ventilation specialists and, where certification is involved, an industrial hygienist. |
| Cleanroom certification | A specialist engagement. We will do comfort and general ventilation around it and nothing that has to be signed. |
| Central chiller plant and cooling towers | A different discipline with different tickets. |
| Proprietary building management systems | We will work with the controls in front of us. Programming a manufacturer-locked system belongs to whoever holds the licence. |
| Commercial refrigeration | Walk-ins, display cases and ice machines are adjacent and are not the same trade. |
Tell us the building
What it is used for, how many units are on the roof, and which rooms have equipment in them. 417 San Aleso Ave, Sunnyvale. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.