The Trouble with Temperature

One thing that my friends know about me is that I love older houses, the character, the detail, the design, all of it. One thing I do not like, specifically in ones that have not seen a major update in this century, are the inconsistencies in heating/cooling throughout them. Have it be winter or summer, the odds are that you have been in a house where the temperature is fine in one place, but drastically different in another. A very annoying situation for you, but an even more frustrating one for the homeowner and its heating/cooling system, trying to maintain comfort for its inhabitants.

Now there are 1000 different causes and solutions depending on layout and the mechanicals of the building. This discussion is more philosophical in nature as to what would happen if the house was able to feel what you are feeling in each room and understand what to do to correct it? This is something that many commercial buildings spend thousands of dollars on to integrate a Building Management System (BMS) into their facility and pay large companies even more money over the life of the building to assist in maintaining. Two big factors in the money spent are temperature and humidity assessment in all spaces. Historically this has had to be done with wired, and sometimes very expensive, metering run by an even more expensive algorithm to adjust and predict the response from the building. This left many places unable to afford and accurately control their heating and cooling, resulting in inefficient and downright wasteful energy consumption.

Today, data and technology allow for not just the elite buildings to benefit from this. Every building can tie into a vast network of readings that can help adjust every space as efficiently as their system allows. The key reason? Efficient and inexpensive temperature sensing, easily interested wirelessly into

anywhere. This then ties back into your thermostat as an adjusted reading from your house, either seen as one point averaged by a program, or multiple sensors averaged by the controller to your system. Either way it can be adjusted for any space and provide significantly more efficient and comfortable living for all involved.

Nearly 1/2 of all energy consumed is from heating and cooling systems. Any optimization that can be done on a local level results in significant savings for the end user, and substantial energy waste reduction overall. Controls can easily account for up to 60% of all system inefficiencies. This would mean that with simple insight, like averaged and accurate temperature readings, we could potentially cut energy waste from HVAC in half. That 100 year old house could control heart like it was brand new, with a couple simple and inexpensive additions to its character-filled rooms.

In the next post I will show some examples of what that would look like and shed some light on how to demistify one part of your living space often forgotten.