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Page 10 — Property Management Quarterly — October 2017
1660 Lincoln Street, Suite 100 l Denver, CO 80264 l 303.861.4800
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provide timely, user friendly reporting for investors.
If your current management company is falling short
in any of these areas, please contact us to today for
a free review and suggestions for improvement.
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Is your management company
failing to make the grade?
Maintenance
A s we get closer to the end
of the year, some people
get excited about football
and the changing Aspens,
while others get excited for
ski trips to the mountains. Then,
there is something no one gets
excited about. You guessed it, win-
ter energy bills!
Most building owners and opera-
tors look at energy bills as this
terrible thing that they cannot con-
trol. However, by learning some dif-
ferent strategies to optimize your
building automation system and
heating, ventilation and air-condi-
tioning systems, you will have the
knowledge to actually turn your
building into a revenue-generating
asset with predictable energy bills.
Getting control of your heating sys-
tem in the winter will have a sig-
nificant effect on demand charges,
equipment life, greenhouse gas
emissions and occupant comfort
(to name a few).
Before making HVAC/BAS chang-
es, the first and most important
thing to do is to benchmark your
building. You may be required to do
this through Energy Star Portfolio
Manager for a citywide ordinance
(such as Energize Denver). The rea-
son benchmarking is so important
is that utility bills, and numbers
in general, mean nothing without
context. How do you know if your
building is performing “better” or
“worse” than similar buildings in
your area? When you decide to
invest in a new chiller, variable fre-
quency drives or controls project,
you want to be able to tell that the
project actually made a difference
to your operating costs, and that
it’s not the weath-
er or some other
factors affecting
it. It is important
to be able to vali-
date the return on
investment.
By benchmark-
ing, you can see
how your building
is doing, normal-
ized for weather/
area/building use/
etc. Once you
know how you’re
doing, you can
start to measure the changes, as
you try some new optimization
and energy-efficiency strategies.
The following are five tips I have
learned from my team of techni-
cians and energy engineers.
1. Always make sure to use
your BAS to match your build-
ing’s HVAC/lighting schedule with
your actual occupancy schedule.
There is no reason to heat up an
entire building on a Sunday when
no one is there or during the holi-
days, when everyone is home with
their families. Use your BAS to set
accurate occupancy schedules, and
always input “exception” days such
as holidays.
2. Individual space heaters at
employees’ desks can be a primary
source of energy waste in a build-
ing. Encourage employees to dress
appropriately and leave their per-
sonal space heaters at home. One
way to change behavior and cul-
ture is to have a real-time energy
dashboard in the lobby or wherever
the employees will see it con-
stantly. If employees can see in real
time how their energy-use habits
are affecting the environment and
their employer’s energy bills, they
tend to start making behavioral
changes. (This is called “The Prius
effect.”)
3. Recommission your gas heat-
ing units to ensure everything is
working properly, and strategically
set up “morning warm-up” rou-
tines within your BAS. Gas is much
cheaper than running electric heat-
ing.
Also, verify outside air damper
operation and ventilation require-
ments for your building. A lot of
buildings are overventilated. When
spaces are unoccupied (i.e., dur-
ing morning warm up), it is OK for
return air to recirculate, as opposed
to bringing in tons of cold, uncon-
ditioned outside air that needs to
be heated. This is called “demand-
controlled ventilation,” which is
the automatic adjustment of venti-
lation. If you’re concerned, imple-
menting carbon monoxide sensors
and recalibration strategies is a
great way to ensure the CO2 levels
are always safe.
Make sure electrical terminal
devices are locked out during
morning warm up. Again, electri-
cal heating costs a lot more than
gas heating, so you want to take
advantage of the gas heating in
the morning when the building is
unoccupied. You also don’t want to
Emily Breeden
Intelligent services
team leader, Rocky
Mountain Trane,
Denver
Rocky Mountain Trane
By placing an energy dashboard in a public, visible space, employees can see in real time
how their energy-use habits are affecting the environment and the energy bill.