Thoughts

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Easy energy savings: Closing Up for Christmas

Thoughts

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    EVORA

Easy energy savings: Tips & Tricks to minimise your energy consumption over the Winter break.

It’s that time of year again: the old Christmas jumper pulled from the depths of your drawers, Secret Santa gifts exchanged, every last drop of mulled wine in a three-mile radius consumed, and now Christmas is just around the corner and the office is closing up.

With all the occupants out and about, why not give your building a break too?

With all the occupants out and about, why not give your building a break too? Closing up for Christmas should be more than just locking the doors and turning on your out of office – the holidays present an ideal opportunity to shut down your building systems and avoid unnecessary wear & tear and energy usage.


These are our top tips for site teams on closing up the office for Christmas:

  • Shut down central plant– The 25thof December and the 1stof January are national holidays across Europe, so as a minimum plant need not run on these days. Many offices will shut on other days as well or even throughout the whole period so be sure to make the most of this. The majority of BMS front-end systems will allow you to set exceptions for specific days so that everything returns to the normal setup in the new year.
  • Turn off / turn down radiators– Any manually-controlled radiators around the building will continue to pump out heat unless you turn down the thermostats or switch off the LTHW system centrally using the BMS.
  • Check frost protection settings– Dealing with frost damage is no way to kick off the new year. Therefore, make it your early resolution to ensure that all internal temperature (stage 2) frost protection settings are adequate. EVORA recommends these be set to 10ºC.
  • Review tenant control panels– We all know what an office is like… Sarah’s too hot, Jonny’s too cold, and no one knows why Phil keeps opening the window. If you leave tenant HVAC control panels unchecked for too long, this battle of wills can quickly make a mess of the settings. As the office empties over the holidays this can be an ideal moment for the site team to step in and do a review, whilst minimising disturbance for the tenants.
  • Reduce fresh air delivery– Even if the office is open chances are occupancy is reduced, and with fewer people around CO2 levels in your building will increase much more slowly. If you’ve got a demand-driven system with CO2 sensors on the extract ducts then, nice work, your BMS is sorting it for you. If not, then consider monitoring building occupancy and internal air quality, then reducing the fresh air delivery rate and/or Air Handling Unit operating hours where possible based on this information. This will have the bonus effect of reducing heating demand, as less cold winter air will be pulled in from outside.
  • Finally, unplug the Christmas lights– I know you’re proud of your nicely decorated tree but come on now, nobody’s here to see it, just switch the lights off!

Happy Holidays from everyone at EVORA!