"The Emme system has been a real blessing. It finally made our building comfortable and resolved a real morale problem. Helping us reduce common area charges by 20% was icing on the cake."
Peter Massaro
VP of Manufacturing and Engineering, Flo-Tech
Problem
Flo-Tech, a pioneer in the managed print services industry, occupies a 65,000 square foot building in Middletown, CT. The accounting and customer service departments occupy approximately 30,000 square feet of office space. This area was heated by a hot water baseboard loop that ran around the perimeter of the building. Three roof top units provided supplemental heat as well as air conditioning in summer.
The office area was almost always uncomfortable. Some offices would be too hot and others would be too cold. Peter Massaro, Vice President of Manufacturing and Engineering, would receive approximately 10-12 complaints a day requesting assistance with heating and cooling issues. A member of engineering staff would try to adjust the VAV boxes, but inevitably, solving the heating or cooling problem in one office would create another problem in a nearby office space. In a number of instances, the hot water loop would overheat an office which would then require air conditioning from the roof top unit to cool it back down. The company solicited proposals from three HVAC contractors, but most of the proposals recommended buying expensive new roof top units which would not have addressed the underlying problem. Finally, Flo-tech learned about the Emme Room-By-Room system from a search on the Internet.
Emme Solution
After studying the problems at Flo-Tech, the engineers at Emme Controls recommended the decommissioning the hot water loop and the installation of three Emme Room-By-Room systems, one for each roof top unit. Wireless sensors were installed in each office and pneumatic dampers were placed in every duct run. In all, the Emme system created 70 separate zones so that the temperature in each office would remain within 2 degrees of set point.
The Emme systems were retro-fitted without remodeling, thereby minimizing business disruptions.