The Industry Secret
The Secrets Few Know!
The HVAC system you have now is specifically designed to not only waste energy but cause equipment failure sooner than necessary! Not just in one way, but TWO!
“How can that be”, you say?
It is just the hard mechanical facts. We will explain here in black and white. Well, a little color.
NUMBER 1
Your conditioned space is like a bucket that is bottom up when you heat, so you fill it upside down (heat rises), and bottom down when you cool. Gravity is the force that makes this so. You fill the bucket up from the ceiling (bottom of the bucket) down to heat, and the floor up to cool.
In this example set temperature is 72 degrees for both heating and cooling
The thermostat is located a third of the way up from the rim of the bucket (usually 4ft. from the floor in a building) when you heat, and conversely from the bottom of the bucket when you cool. This is signified by the T on the two buckets in our illustration above.
Your HVAC system will supply conditioning until the bucket is full (full being only to the thermostat) when it reaches set temperature, and the thermostat says that’s enough.
The illustration shows the thermostat up varies from 72o up to 85o, and from the thermostat down, 72o down to 63o. This shows heat mass concentration on the ceiling, and cold on the floor.
Consequently, in heating, it takes time for the desired temperature to reach you, all the way from the ceiling down. This time period relates directly to what the outside temperature is, and varies accordingly. As the heat takes its time to reach the level of the fullness it takes to supply the desired temperature called for at the thermostat level, the heat becomes massive and concentrated against the top of the walls and ceiling. The opposite obviously occurs when cooling.
This build up exacerbates the loss of heat or cooling from the inside to the outside, almost as though holes suddenly appear in the roof and walls, gradually increasing in size. This is known as Delta T Heat Transfer. The greater the difference in temperature from the outside to the inside of your conditioned space, the faster your conditioning is depleted, (on an exponential curve by the way, to make up for the holes) and thus requiring another filling. The larger the building you have and the higher the ceiling, naturally, the greater the loss.
SPECIAL NOTE: No one lives on the ceiling and anyone could freeze living on the floor.
NUMBER 2
In addition to the previous design dilemma, and to further intensify wasted energy loss, consider the following on how your HVAC system is sized according to code design standards.You had better sit down for this one.
ANY, ALL, and yes, YOUR heating and cooling system, properly sized, and in good working condition, IS up to 130% oversized up to 97% of the time.
“That’s inconceivable, isn’t that a little overkill”, you say?
Following are the facts that prove it. Keep in mind as you absorb this, the waste we are identifying is NOT considered waste by the HVAC industry, they view it a necessary evil,
At the time the HVAC contractor or engineer calculated the size of the system you needed, to keep you comfortable in the worst possible condition, they used a formula from ASHRAE (American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers).
A part of that formula is called the base temperature calculation, which is determined by your nearest local weather station. There are over 10,000 stations across the nation.
The data recorded at your local station is checked back 50 years. They find the ten coldest days, and take the average of those ten days. Let’s just say that base temperature is 10° below zero.
For air-conditioning they would take the ten hottest days, but for the purpose of simplicity, we’ll discuss heat only here. Yet the principal is the same for air conditioning.
For heating the contractor will install a furnace that is large enough so when it is 10° below zero outside, the furnace will maintain a temperature of 70° inside. Simple isn’t it?
So if base temperature is 10° below zero. Let’s say that will require a 100,000 BTU furnace.
Now let’s say, instead of the base temperature being 10° below zero, base temperature is 20° above zero and in order to maintain 70° inside, it would now only take a 65,000 BTU furnace.
So obviously the minute the temperature is warmer than the base temperature, you would immediately, and by design, begin to have EXCESS CAPACITY in your system.
Now if we had ten days in one year of base temperature (10° below zero), that would make headline news, heck, if we had five days it would be headline news.
But let’s just say we had ten days, that’s only about 3% of the year. So 97% of the time your system has excess capacity.
Now it’s just basic arithmetic, any system that is sized properly for base temperature, at 60°, and 60° is about where people begin to turn on their furnace, that system is 98% oversized at 60°. Are you beginning to see the problem?
If you were to chart your energy usage over a season, in the highest demand of the season your system would work the hardest and longest because that is when it is closest to base temperature (See the graph below), and functioning towards its designed capacity.
In the Fall and Spring is when you will have the most excess capacity for heating because that is the portion of the season that is the farthest from base temperature, presenting the least demand.
If you draw a line through the middle of the season, you could call that the average demand for the season. If you were only up to 98% oversized up to 97% of the time, and you took the average of 98 and 97 (demand over time, divided by two), you would have 49% as the average use of design capacity.
We have documentation of that kind of reduction in consumption.
Everybody always remembers the most extreme hot or cold days, yet they fail to realize that 80% of the season the temperatures ranged between 32° and 65°. Which means, 80% of the time your system is functioning with better than 50% more capacity than necessary.
If your system were to run at design capacity, it would run continuously, nonstop. Most of the time your system goes on and off, yet it was designed to run nonstop. SO, when it turns on, it functions at full capacity. This creates what is called overshoot. That is why HVAC systems seem to produce too much heat in milder weather, and air-conditioning feels too cold on milder cooling days.
To further multiply the waste, an additional 15% is designed in to the system, to allow for any variance in manufacturing.
And finally, the contractor or engineer may calculate an additional 15%, and usually does for liability purposes. Thermal shock is bad for business.
So you see:
YOUR system is functioning, up to 130% oversized, and up to 97% of the time!!
THE GOOD NEWS!
Emerald Air® is a thermal air management system with a unique tested method of dynamically downsizing your current system, limiting your HVAC system to produce conditioning for only what is necessary for the immediate set of circumstances and conditions present at each and every individual heating or cooling cycle. The Emerald Air system destratifies temperature gradients, and eliminates stagnation, due to normal costly obsolete air circulation design.
The Emerald Air system expediently and perpetually creates airflow to the floor through a narrow column air path. This will constantly, and quickly, mix the newly conditioned air initiated by your thermostat as soon as it is introduced to your conditioned space by the cycling of your system, satisfying the thermostat sooner, and retaining the conditioning longer.
In winter seasonal demand, Emerald Air causes the floor and fixtures to act as a large dynamic heat exchanger and in the summer as a heat sink, dissipating unwanted heat through the floor, while harvesting the cooling from it.
Heating
The Emerald Air system saves energy by dramatically slowing and constantly regulating the rate of heat transfer by eliminating severe temperature flux. The floor and all the content of the building become an active catalyst facility for heat due to the continual movement of low velocity air across everything. Occupants stay more comfortable by maintaining a more stable, and less variable temperature within the space, to within 1-2 degrees between the ceiling and the floor. This eliminates the need for using electric heaters under desks, resulting in a great deal less electrical energy use, and possible fire hazard. By forcing the energy to remain imbedded indoors, that was once unusable and wasted, and leaving the building exponentially.
Cooling
The Emerald Air system forces unwanted heat to the floor while lifting the cold air that falls to the floor, previously dissipated through wall infiltration by Delta T Transfer. Heat transfers in the direction that is cooler. Since the Earth is 55o under the floor, heat transfers to the earth by way of heat sinking. At the same stroke, Emerald Air draws coolness from the earth, minimizing the demand for air-conditioning, and eliminating the need for portable electric heaters. The result keeps occupants more comfortable by equalizing temperature to the maximum.
A great comparison to the difference between using your current HVAC system with or without Emerald Air can be compared to the difference between using an Insta-Hot water tap, or waiting for hot tap water to reach you, all the way from the water heater to the tap.
Understanding the missing link technology should help you make the best practical choice, and use your energy dollar in a much more conservative and productive way. NOW it is the time to save natural resources, reduce energy consumption, and add to your bottom line.
Now is the time to add a new revenue stream from what used to be untouchable inflationary fixed operating expenses, by implementing the innovative simple brilliance of Emerald Air Delta T Control. Now is the time to see and feel for yourself, why Emerald Air is #1 in comfortable energy savings.