While upgrading to new energy efficient HVAC equipment is generally intended to save healthcare facilities money in the long term, the initial installation sometimes comes with a few challenges.
Often overcoming these challenges is a team effort between maintenance and engineering staffs to determine where the problems lie and develop solutions that will work in both the short and long term to ensure savings goals are met.
In a Jan. 2013 Maintenance Solutions article, editor Dan Hounsell looks at one such project. When the Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Ill., made a 174,109 square-foot addition to its hospital to aid in patient comfort, the retrofit included adding two new high-efficiency chillers as well as two new high-efficiency boilers to the facility.
The maintenance and engineering staffs went through an adjustment period of troubleshooting issues before the components operated as intended.
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