Coiled up and sick?
Having your buildings heating, ventilation
and air conditioning system cleaned will save energy and reduce sick days for
the occupants. A buildings duct system acts like its lungs and circulatory
system.
Many commercial buildings have poor
filtration in the AHU plant and, as a result, you will get a large amount of
particulate inside the building. Cleaning of these systems takes a specialised
crew to ensure the health and safety of the buildings occupants.
It’s not just old systems that need
cleaning. In fact, the newer and more efficient your HVAC system is, the more
likely it is to benefit from regular coil inspection and cleaning. These
newer systems operate at greatly increased pressures and are less tolerant of
increases in static pressure.
While clean coils have always been important,
today’s higher-efficiency units require more efficient heat transfer across
larger coils to function at their highest capacity.
New
units with high SEER ratings often have variable-speed fan motors that adjust
fan speed based on demand; however, these units lose much of their
effectiveness when forced to run harder than necessary due to fouled condenser
vanes.
The condenser coil is exposed to unfiltered
outside air and elements such as dust, dirt, leaves, grass clippings, animal
fur, animal urine and more.
Contaminants on the coil surface act as
an insulation media between the air and the cooling coil and if the air flowing
through the coil is not reduced in temperature adequately enough the system will
not cool the building efficiently.
Therefore, the compressor will run
continuously to compensate for the poor temperature transfer. In a system where
the air is cooling the building efficiently, the compressor will cycle in and
out of service as required. Poor heat transfer results in poor energy savings.
Obviously if there are blockages in the
coil the amount of air passing through the system will decrease dramatically.
This in turn affects the air conditioner’s ability to cool the air and to
compensate, the compressor is running for longer periods.
Contaminants
attach themselves to the fins of the cooling coil. Over time, they become
etched into the surface to provide a secure holding. This eats away at the
cooling coil and over time degenerates the cooling coil’s ability to perform
efficient heat transfer.
The solution for coil corrosion is to remove
contaminants through maintenance.
An alternative is to replace the cooling
coil, which comes at a greater cost than coil maintenance.
Professional HVAC technicians will tell you
that effective cooling coil maintenance provides cost savings in energy
consumption and extends the life of your asset.
At RABScreen we assert that prevention is
far better than the cure. That is why we introduced the unique RABScreenexternal filter which can protect any air intake on any
air movement system.
No comments:
Post a Comment