Mike Cappuccio from N.E.T.R., Inc. talks about HVAC systems in commercial buildings, the difficult situations that sometimes arise with heating and cooling in office environments, and why installing a ductless heating and cooling system may be a good idea.
Hi, my name is Mike Cappuccio, I’m with N.E.T.R., Inc. in North Andover, Massachusetts, and I’m here today to talk to you about Mitsubishi heating and cooling systems for a commercial building. Why would I want to install a Mitsubishi system in a commercial building? Well, first off, most commercial buildings today are heated and cooled by sometimes one or two rooftop units in a small area, and you have a lot of perimeter space in an office or in a commercial building where you have offices that are on the outside of the building that are either hot or cold, and in the center of the building you have spots that are either hot or cold as well.
Our systems for commercial buildings allow zones. What do I mean by that? Each office or each area can be its own zone and we can basically install its own heating and cooling system in one area or one office of that building with one outdoor unit. The way that these systems are designed are, there is what’s called a two-pipe system, which is a heating and cooling system which basically needs to either be in the heating mode or the cooling mode, which a lot of times you have that in a commercial building already with one rooftop unit.
What happens there is, right around October 15th in the New England area you would turn off the air-conditioning and turn on the [heating]. What that means is everybody in the building needs to be on the heating mode, and then come springtime everybody in the building is on the cooling mode. That’s how your traditional two-pipe CITY MULTI system works or S-Series system.
Now, they also offer what’s called a three-pipe system. A three-pipe system is basically a simultaneous heating and cooling system where anybody can have any temperature in any space in any office, whether they need heating or cooling. For example, why would I need cooling in the wintertime in an office space? Think of this — you have a conference room and you put 10 to 15 people in there and that room becomes hot in the wintertime, well, you don’t want the heating on in that room you want the cooling on in that room.
With the three-pipe system, it allows you to put the air conditioning system on in that particular hot spot, but it also is allowing the heating to go on at the same time in the perimeter offices where those are cold in the wintertime. It allows you to basically have the same temperature or any temperature that you want in the building at any point in time which is a great system to have. Those are you simultaneous heating and cooling systems. Much different than if you were to have one rooftop unit.
Envision this, you have one rooftop unit in that commercial building and you have to turn the thermostat down out in the common area to keep the conference room cool while there’s 15 people in there. The other people that are out in that office area are freezing now at that point and you’re probably going to see him running electric heaters or have on their winter coats and things like that because the air conditioning is on in the wintertime.
Our systems allow you not to do that. This is where we would come in and we would look at your building and determine your needs for that and see what kind of system do you need, how do you use your office space, how do you use your commercial building, and then go to the design phase from there.