CASE STUDY: Recently at a senior living facility, I was in the middle of an assessment of their mechanical systems when the cook in the kitchen told me that her work area was always SUPER hot and almost unbearable at times. Our technician who was assisting me noticed that the thermostat was set at 72 but the kitchen area was reading 78 degrees and she really wasn’t even in the middle of cooking anything at 3pm in the afternoon.
After a few questions and a more detail survey of the area, we noticed that there could be two, possibly three smoking guns to the issue.
#1 The commercial cooking hood was massive and running wide open overtop of the cooking equipment. This was evacuating all of the expensive, conditioned air out of this zone and the system couldn’t keep up. A dollar bill was put on the hood vent (see photo) to demonstrate the amount of pull. REMEMBER: For every CFM that leaves the building, a CFM must come into the building and it most likely be unconditioned, hot and humid air from outside.
#2 There could be a low level of refrigerant in that system’s circuit. HVAC Manifold gauges can play a diagnostic function for this type of troubleshooting. For diagnostics, they are used to establish whether an HVAC system is working well or not.
A set of pressure gauges is one of the most important assets when working on HVAC systems. An HVAC gauge reads the pressure of various liquids and gases in an air conditioning system. It’s also crucial for reading vacuum pressure when pressure testing or charging a cooling system.
SOLUTION: A preventative maintenance program will shore up their systems and establish a benchmark before any further system improvement recommendations will be made. I’m looking forward to simply restoring them to comfortable and easing the headaches and stress of upper management having to deal with unhappy guest, patients, and employees.
Hot and humid working conditions are simply unacceptable.
