When you own a business, you wear a lot of different hats. You need to know all about your core products and services, but at the same time, you have to juggle recruiting, hiring, marketing, accounting, and countless other tasks. Additionally, you also have to think about optimizing your commercial space, which includes heating and cooling.
Unfortunately, business owners have to deal with a variety of HVAC challenges. To keep your commercial space as comfortable as possible, you should be aware of the following issues and how to mitigate them.
Expensive Energy Bills
In the United States, small businesses spend $60 billion per year on heating and cooling. Of course, your company’s bill is only a small fraction of that total, but energy costs can easily dig into your monthly budget. To avoid astronomical bills, you may want to explore the following tips:
- Schedule an energy audit to see where you’re wasting energy
- Improve the insulation in your building
- Replace old inefficient heating and cooling systems
- Use an automatic thermostat so you never forget to lower the temperature when you’re out of the building
- Consider switching to zoned heating and cooling
- Service your commercial HVAC system regularly
- Talk with a commercial HVAC expert for more ideas
Unexpected HVAC Repairs
A surprise HVAC repair can be costly, and if the entire system shuts down, you may have to close your business, costing you even more money in the long run. To avoid unexpected repairs, it’s important to get your system serviced regularly. Generally, HVAC service technicians can alert you to potential performance issues or breakdowns before they occur, and in most cases, you can fix the issue with a minor repair before things get out of control.
For instance, if the repair technicians notice that your air conditioner coils are leaking refrigerant, they can repair the leak right away. In contrast, if no one detects the leak, your AC stops making cold air and then it must run continually to keep temperatures low in your facility. That drives up your monthly energy bill, while simultaneously putting unnecessary wear and tear on the system and potentially causing long term damage, necessitating a more expensive repair.
Uneven Heating and Cooling
Unfortunately, many HVAC systems supply uneven heating and cooling in commercial spaces. Sometimes, this happens because your dampers need to be adjusted. Essentially, as cold or warm air flows through the ductwork in a commercial building, dampers control the airflow and encourage air to flow to the parts of the building that need it the most. If the dampers are incorrectly balanced, this process gets disrupted. A commercial HVAC technician can let you know if this is happening in your space.
In other cases, you may need different amounts of heating or cooling depending on what’s happening in your commercial building. For instance, if you have a room full of servers, commercial cooking appliances, manufacturing equipment, or anything else that generates a lot of heat, you may want more air conditioning in these spaces during the summer and reduced heating in the winter. To make this possible, you may need to gravitate away from ducted HVAC systems and opt for a mini split system that offers zone technology, allowing you to control each area separately.
Unhappy Tenants
If you own an office building, a multi-unit retail space, an apartment building, or any other commercial space with tenants, you may end up dealing with complaints from your tenants. They may be upset by uneven heating and cooling, excessive heating and cooling bills, or the inability to control the thermostat in their unit.
Although there are a variety of solutions available for these issues, switching to a ductless system can address them all. With a whole building commercial HVAC system, you can split your building into zones. You can allow tenants to specify their target temperatures while also setting up minimum and maximum guidelines to prevent abuse. You can also track usage for each individual tenant, ensuring they don’t pay more than their fair share.
Wasting Money Heating and Cooling Unused Areas
Many business owners end up wasting money heating or cooling unused spaces in their buildings. This often happens in large commercial buildings with empty units, apartment buildings with vacancies, and even in small commercial buildings with inventory storage areas that aren’t frequently used. Typically, the best solution to this challenge is a zoned heating and cooling system that allows you to turn on and off the heat or air conditioning in different rooms as desired.
Poor Indoor Air Quality
Your HVAC system doesn’t just heat and cool your space. It also has a significant impact on your indoor air quality. Dust, allergens, and other pollutants can build up in the duct work of your commercial HVAC system. Then, as air travels through the ducts, it picks up these elements, blowing them onto your employees, tenants, or customers.
Poor air quality can degrade worker concentration, increase illnesses, and often makes your commercial space less pleasant overall. Keeping your filter clean helps a lot, but you may also need to clean your ducts and potentially consider switching to a ductless heating and cooling system.
Contact N.E.T.R. Inc. Today
You, your employees, your customers, your tenants, and anyone else in your commercial space deserve a comfortable, healthy environment, and your commercial HVAC system plays a big role in that process. To set up new commercial HVAC service, schedule maintenance for your existing system, or learn more about the benefits of investing in a ductless HVAC system, contact us today. At N.E.T.R., Inc., we help commercial and residential clients in the Boston area discover heating and cooling solutions that work, and we look forward to helping you resolve your commercial HVAC challenges.
