How can air conditioning benefit your business?

[edit] Benefits of AC in changing temperatures

Every year seems to bring a fresh crop of reports on how summer temperatures are setting new records. Sadly, this is often bad news rather than good. As a result, it's becoming increasingly important for businesses to prioritise keeping people cool in summer as highly as they prioritise keeping people warm in winter. The best solution for this is air conditioning. Here specialists share their insights into some of the ways it can help business'.

[edit] Enabling people to breathe more easily

Air conditioning doesn’t just cool air, it also cleans it. Firstly, it uses filtration systems to remove allergens, dust and pollutants. Secondly, it ensures that air is actively circulated between the inside and the outside of a building. In other words, it ensures that stale air is regularly pumped outside, and fresh air is brought in.

For clarity, in buildings without air conditioning, air circulates through open windows and doors, possibly assisted by fans. This is much less efficient than air conditioning. It can also create security implications. Even when it doesn’t, it will almost certainly increase the level of pollutants and allergens in a building.

The benefit of this will be most significant to people with respiratory conditions and certain allergies (e.g., hay fever). It will, however, benefit all staff and visitors to some extent. Indirectly, therefore, it will also benefit employers as it will enable staff to focus more of their energy on their work.

[edit] Keeping people cool

It’s generally agreed that the best temperature for an office is around 20-22°C. Places where people do other types of work may benefit from being at different temperatures. For example, places where people do a lot of manual work may need to be a lot cooler.

In modern buildings, keeping people cool may very well be much more of a challenge than providing heat when it's needed. The main reason for this is that modern buildings tend to contain a lot of electronics. Electronic equipment generates heat. This can be useful in the colder months but a real problem in the warmer ones.

Staff who are too hot cannot focus on their work as well as they could if they were at a comfortable temperature. This will inevitably have an impact on productivity. Additionally, the heat may lead to (or exacerbate) friction between colleagues. It could even lead to people feeling physically ill.

Businesses that routinely have visitors on the premises also need to think about the impact on them. Realistically, if the temperature in a building is uncomfortably warm, people who can leave will generally be more inclined to do so. This could result in a significant loss of custom for your business.

[edit] Protecting the building and its contents

While any business’ top priority has to be to protect the humans on their property, most, if not all businesses, also have to think about protecting the building itself. Even if a landlord takes care of the exterior, the business will have some level of responsibility for the interior. At a minimum, it will need to look after its own equipment.

As previously mentioned, most workplaces already have a lot of electronic equipment. This generates significant quantities of heat but is also vulnerable to it. Areas which house a lot of IT equipment are likely to need specific cooling. This is particularly true if the devices are in close proximity to each other (e.g., server rooms).

IT equipment spread over a broader area, can, however, often be cooled effectively by ambient cooling such as air conditioning. For completeness, fans on their own are unlikely to be effective. This is because fans do not actually cool the air. They just move it around.

--ChillAirConditioning 11:16, 28 Jul 2023 (BST)

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings

• Absorption refrigeration.
• Africa tops world AC growth forecasts.
• Air conditioning.
• Air conditioning inflation and supply chain crisis
• Air conditioning in non-domestic buildings.
• Air conditioning inspection (energy performance regulations).
• Air conditioning inspection procedure.
• Air handling unit.
• BREEAM Impact of refrigerants.
• BSRIA completes 2021 World Air Conditioning market studies.
• BSRIA: new Global Air Conditioning Market Studies.
• Building Automation and Control System BACS.
• Chilled beam.
• Chiller units.
• Chilled water.
• Cooling systems for buildings.
• Complex system.
• Data centres.
• Dehumidification.
• Designing HVAC to resist harmful microorganisms.
• Ductwork.
• Evaporative cooling.
• Fan coil unit.
• Fresh air.
• Global Air Conditioning Study 2016.
• Growing focus on IAQ challenges for specifiers and HVAC manufacturers.
• Heat recovery.
• Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning.
• How to Use Your Air Conditioning Energy Assessments to Reduce Energy Costs.
• Humidification.
• Humidity.
• HVAC.
• HVAC balancing.
• IAQ developments accelerated by COVID-19 pandemic.
• Local air conditioning.
• Refrigerants.
• Thermal comfort.
• Underfloor air conditioning at London Grade II listed landmark.
• US among top 2020 global variable refrigerant flow markets.
• Variable air volume VAV.
• Variable refrigerant flow VRF.
• When hospital buildings aren’t healthy.
• Workplace air conditioning.