At ambient temperatures exceeding 72°F, the penthouse supply fan system for this 540,000 square foot facility was unable to provide adequate cooling to the top 12 floors of the building.  Arden Realty gave us the goal of meeting the cooling needs of the occupants, while simultaneously reducing the energy consumed in the building.

A retrofit was performed in late 1999 to upgrade the HVAC systems to meet these two, usually mutually exclusive goals.

The summer of 2000 was a  hot summer in San Diego, with temperature well above the norm.  The HVAC system served a peak cooling load approximately XXX% greater than had been served in the past 15 years, while achieving an overall energy reduction of 11% for the year to date.

Tenant hot call complaints, which used to run over two dozen a day during the summer, have been reduced to a few per  week, with a few cold calls coming in now and again.  Many of the VAV boxes had been wide open for so long trying to get air to their zones, that the dampers had become stuck in the wide open position.  The operating staff have been going to these cold call zones and rectifying the situation, but people seem to be very happy about it being a bit on the cool side, as opposed to it being well into the hot side. 

This occurred in spite of the fact that the overall energy consumption of the facility was reduced by approximately 11%, while the occupancy of the facility has increased by DW%, and several new data centers and other 24 hour per day electrical loads have been added to the building.

600 B. Street | 701 B. Street | 8383 Wilshire | Arden Norwalk