Air conditioning update

The chiller is working and in many instances is bigger than the building needs in size. You may recall that we have had problems with the chiller shutting down because of low demand, not high demand. We also have to consider that the units have large areas of glass and most owners have little to no window coverings to prevent heat penetration through the glass. We are also now going through a heat wave and that adds to the stress of the system and its overall effectiveness because the chilled water comes from the basement to the top floor before it returns to the chiller. With everyone on the system using it to its maximum means that higher floors will have warmer chilled water than lower floors providing less effective air conditioning.

We also had a recent power failure, causing individual insuite directional flow valves to close and the solenoid has not re-opend some of them. This prevents chilled water from entering the coils of the individual fan coil units in the suites. In addition, the main chiller does not automatically turn back on after a power failure and we require the attendance of a technician to restart the chiller. This was a built in safety on the system but has become a bit of a nuisance. Since I don't live there, I need someone to tell me that a power failure occured for long enough to affect the chiller so that I can call a Technician in to restart it.

I have had many calls about the air conditioning and have been successful in getting owners/resident to reset their insuite valves by getting them to turn off their suite power for about 5 to 10 seconds and then turn it back on. This seems to be the solution to the problem for many of the residents. Servicing and repair and maintenance of the insuite fan coil units are the responsibility of the unit owner. Many have had little to no maintenance done on them since installation and many people don't even change their filters regularly. Much of this contributes to lower effective individual air conditioning. I would be happy to take direction from anyone on anything else we can do to assist in getting better AC. I have to date asked if there is anyway that we can install an automatic restart of the chiller after a power failure and am waiting for a written response, hopefully with a positive suggestion.

Bert

Bert Berger, Property Manager
Vellum Group
416-635-7721