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Four-story office building wants to shut down five large air handlers nightly. Purpose is to lower energy costs when building is unoccupied. This will cause all fire/smoke dampers (FSDs) to close (the smoke detectors in return ducts need minimum operational air velocity).
The FSDs are mostly original from 1985-1988. Only UL tested for 5000 cycles and no dynamic. I cannot find a code reference to prohibit this and believe that the FSDs are already near the end of their functional lifespan. Many have been replaced due to bad actuators, binding jack shafts and missing blades. Anyone know of a code reference to prohibit this use or when a FSD must be replaced? Thanks in advance. Sent in anonymously for discussion. Click Title to View | Submit Your Question | Subscribe
5 Comments
7/11/2023 08:46:06 am
Shutting down air handlers at night typically have undesirable effects on commercial buildings. Not only do the FSDs lose function during that period, but the lack of air circulation allows hot or cold spots to take hold that can become problematic and create imbalances in indoor environmental quality during the occupied periods. A solution to consider would be to close fresh air dampers to their minimums during unoccupied hours and use setback temperature sequences to reduce energy usage.
SCHULMAN
7/11/2023 09:13:20 am
Uggh... The ways people think they can save energy. They should consider that the recovery work needed to overcompensate for the 8 hours or so of "no air circulation" and/or conditioning will actually ultimately cost them MORE money and use MORE energy.
Jesse
7/11/2023 09:35:24 am
The phrase, "law of unintended consequences" comes to mind.
Donald Pierce
7/11/2023 12:27:28 pm
Thank you all for your responses. Intuitively I presumed use of FSD components to be exclusive to that purpose alone. Daily cycling of FSDs that are 38 years old, as part of an energy conservation strategy, seems irresponsible at best. Today's UL555s standard is much more stringent rhan it was in 1985. 1985 was tested for 5K cycles and current tests are for 20K. Once again intuition makes me hesitate to approve old FSDs to be used in this capacity. If only I could cite intuition as the basis for denial. Appreciate your feedback and Joe's Forum to kick ideas around.
Janak
7/12/2023 11:10:24 am
Deficient fire damper(s) would allow a potential fire to spread from one fire area to the next. So, a deficient fire damper must be replaced as soon as the deficient condition is found/reported. Leave a Reply. |
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