Anyone else got the aircon whacked up?

[Dos_Box]

I don't have any at home (and who could afford to run one these days?), but have a fan gently cooling me down atm. This sudden burst increase in temps has had me reaching for the summer wear and as my home office faces east had to abandon it yesterday afternoon.

We've even matched London temps here in the NW today!

[6Foot2]

What air con?

 

😓

[BOOT]

No aircon in my new oven... I mean office.

[ThatBoringBloke]

We're just in the process of doing costing for energy use per room in our new build school. Our server room has 5 air con units and the room itself is 'apparently' costing £2,500 a month to run! Been asked to see if I can turn two of them off this morning... The other three seem to have increased their output. 

[Koldov]

This is actually currently causing a 'heated' (sorry) debate in school at the moment. Having quite a few female teachers of a certain age, air-con (more just the heat of classrooms) is high on the agenda.

 

We have most classrooms with South facing windows, working air-con in about two of them (and in a couple of offices). Most classroom windows have security hinges meaning they can only be opened a couple of inches at best...

Edited April 30, 2025 by Koldov

[NegativeKillDeath]

2 minutes ago, ThatBoringBloke said:

We're just in the process of doing costing for energy use per room in our new build school. Our server room has 5 air con units and the room itself is 'apparently' costing £2,500 a month to run! Been asked to see if I can turn two of them off this morning... The other three seem to have increased their output. 

Whats your target temp for the room?

[3s-gtech]

Just done the usual walk of sweaty pits to check how many of our units have been set to heat mode. More than one.

 

Old buildings mostly here, which are good, apart from one south-facing block which is a grim sweatbox. We need to fix this.

[ThatBoringBloke]

2 minutes ago, NegativeKillDeath said:

Whats your target temp for the room?

20.

[Aprice]

Had to go up to the office at 10:30 last night to prop the 'comms room' door open after getting a string of Zabbix alerts from our kit.

No air con in there & the desk fan electronics seem to have packed up.

[PotNoodleTech]

You work from home types should be cooler than the rest of us anyway - as you don't usually bother putting trousers on do you?

 

/jealous

[Boredguy]

Air Conditioning???? I did open a side window in the server room to draw more air in, but we just have a 12" extractor fan running 24/7 to keep the room at a reasonable temp.

 

According to the digital thermometer/Co2 reader the Gov provided during covid, my office is a low 27.5c currently (as if often the case)

 

We do have AC in some of the IT suites, but staff/students love to keep adjusting it from the Automatic 21c-23c they are normally set to, to just be in pure heat mode or pure cold mode with silly temps selected.

[Koldov]

At home we are both blessed and cursed.

 

We have a lovely South facing garden, unfortunately next doors massive extension blocks the late afternoon/evening sun from most of it (although when we get to 30c plus we might be grateful for that)... made even taller by being 'stepped up' as the road we live on has a slight incline.

 

Anyway, the house is a 1950s bungalow with a modest extension at the rear. The extension is reasonably modern (well compared to the age of the original bungalow), has a solid concrete slab floor, well insulated walls & flat roof and big South facing patio doors... it's warm! The other side of the house (the original bungalow, or 'North Wing' as we like to call it), has poor cavity and loft insulation, floor boards, smaller windows that get hardly any sun, big rooms and an open fireplace... it's cold! In Winter it was quite hard to heat, so we practically lived in the extension, but we've joked that when it gets hot this Summer, we'll be moving into the North Wing!

[Dos_Box]

12 minutes ago, PotNoodleTech said:

You work from home types should be cooler than the rest of us anyway - as you don't usually bother putting trousers on do you?

 

/jealous

<Stares down at shorts> I have no idea what you are talking about!

[machy]

Mines on a nice cool 21.

One of the only good things about the windowless box in the middle of the school.

 

 

My old place had no windows, nor aircon. it was 27 ish most of the year.

 

have been thinking about getting a portable unit for home, my house is small enough i think one (bigger) one will be all i need 

[Andrew_C]

Nope.

 

I have it in a lecture theatre here, programmed it to be on yesterday for an exam.  Thought "Hmm... bit warm in here" had mad panic looking for exam laptops that hadn't appeared.

 

Got back to LT - 26 and rising.  Hmmm... System claims it's on, but no cooling, just dragging hot air in from flat roof.

 

Right, turn OFF.  Noope - just keeps on truckin.  Bggr - up on roof, and hit E stop.

 

Proper man being summoned to fix it.  Not the first time it has done this.

[jmak]

I learned that policy at our place is target temp 24°C +/- 2°C - so essentially 26 in summer and 22 in winter and was decided to align with our energy optimisation policy. 

 

One minor issue with this is that our fancy new building has central HVAC management which could conceivably have some optimisation from the supplier, but essentially isn't adjustable. And no one can explain why one of the offices is at 10°C...

[Rob_D]

No classroom AC here (apart from the ICT Suites) and for offices, the policy seems to have been that you only get AC if you don't have external windows (or are reception for some reason).

I'm lucky though, my office faces west and is shaded out until about 2pm I'm in the new build that's surprisingly good at keeping cool.

 

Our school weather station registered 30c yesterday, although it always seems to read high on temp and I'm not seeing AC tubes hanging out the upstairs windows along our street yet, so it can't be that bad.

 

9 hours ago, jmak said:

I learned that policy at our place is target temp 24°C +/- 2°C - so essentially 26 in summer and 22 in winter and was decided

On the face of it, 22 seems quite warm for winter. I'm sure I read somewhere 18-21 is recommended for workplaces.

Edited May 2, 2025 by Rob_D

[robintech]

We really need aircon for students taking exams or even day to day and staff as well,  I find it difficult enough to concentrate when it's 28C let alone reaching near 40C we've had the past couple of years. 

[Roberto]

It gets over 30 degrees _very_ quickly in my WFH office, which is a log cabin in the garden. It's lovely in the spring and the autumn but gets way too warm or way to cold very quickly in the winter and summer, so I have one of those aircon units that both heats and cools. Couldn't manage without it. Especially as the laptops we use tend to run hotter than the surface of the sun without any help from the environment.

 

We did have aircon fitted to the IT classrooms when I worked for the college back in the day. When you consider we're dealing with the heating abilities of 25 to 30 computers per classroom plus, how can I put this, the potentially variable hygiene qualities of teenage students, it was generally held to be needed.

 

We also have a portable aircon unit in the kitchen, Mrs Roberto runs a baking business from home and you can probably imagine what it would be like running an oven all day  in the summer without that, not to mention some icing just not setting in the heat.

Edited May 2, 2025 by Roberto

[NegativeKillDeath]

10 hours ago, jmak said:

I learned that policy at our place is target temp 24°C +/- 2°C - so essentially 26 in summer and 22 in winter and was decided to align with our energy optimisation policy. 

 

One minor issue with this is that our fancy new building has central HVAC management which could conceivably have some optimisation from the supplier, but essentially isn't adjustable. And no one can explain why one of the offices is at 10°C...

Your walk in fridge seems to be running a little warm, you might wanna get that looked at.

[Warwick_Tech]

We share an office with the Server Room so our aircon is on 24/7 365 -which makes it interesting when I go out of the office wearing a jumper to quickly realise my mistake;

 

The aircon on the first floor has been broken for months and would cost several hundered thousand to repair, and no one wants to stump up the bill - ground floor aircon seems to be off right now, but was on over Christmas...

 

The biggest issue is everyone opening the South facing windows AND the aircon on maximum, causes the aircon in the server room to fail most hot days so now we have our own dedicated one making two in our office.

 

Our new BM decided it was a great idea to buy 100+ portable units for the main classrooms and you can figure how that went and how many of them are now trashed in a corner vibrating warm air around....

[3s-gtech]

I've just cable tied the windows shut in rooms with air con. Opening the windows involves standing on the tables.

 

I'm waiting for a union complaint of it being a health and safety risk to lock the (top hung) windows. The counter is "It's a lot riskier standing on the tables. Stop opening the windows, you sponge."

[mikes]

No aircon in my office but it's basically a cell with no natural light (which I thought was illegal even for prisoners) so it's pretty cold in here most times anyway. Leaving the office yesterday felt like getting off a cold aircraft into a sunny foreign country!

[PotNoodleTech]

29 minutes ago, mikes said:

No aircon in my office but it's basically a cell with no natural light (which I thought was illegal even for prisoners) so it's pretty cold in here most times anyway. Leaving the office yesterday felt like getting off a cold aircraft into a sunny foreign country!

 

Yes you are being treated less humanely than a convicted prisoner.

 

 

From the prison reform trust website:

 

Lighting

There must be electric lighting which works properly, and there must be natural light. The accommodation standard is met if:

a. The lighting is not damaged in a way that would significantly reduce light.

b. All lighting including the night-light can be switched on and off.

c. There is an external window in the room.

[Millgate_Jon]

My home office has the sun hitting it all day, I had the curtains drawn yesterday to try and shield myself a bit which worked but.....messed with my circadian somewhat with it being dark all day except for trips to the kitchen for coffee and lunch when I was blinded and baked around the rest of the house!