Unattended Heating

I was going to post this entry a few hours before, but when I started writing it, I saw a solution to the problem, and then spent some time solving the problem rather than talking about it.

Yesterday I was helping a friend out with some communications issues he was having at work. He works near what many people call the coldest place in Australia, and yesterday was a rather cool day in the middle of winter. I walked into two small rooms during the day, and found Air Conditioner heaters operating, and there was no one around.

The first room was the most concerning, as it was a small office at maintenance depot. The office was small, and is more used as a meeting room for maintenance staff rather than being a place where people actually work most of the time. What is worse is that this location contained exactly zero insulation. To be honest, the building should probably be knocked down and rebuilt as it is probably close to end of life. Unfortunately, removing the structure will be expensive due to the asbestos in the walls, and likely the ceiling too.

The second room with rather efficient Air Conditioner heater was on what could only be described as a construction site, and was a building that was destined to be used as the hub for the site. The building is basically complete, but the rest of the site requires a heap more work. For the next few months, I anticipate that there will only be the occasional need people to enter this room/building. Yet, the Air Conditioner was set to heat the interior to a toasty 25C. It could be argued that there was a need to test the Air Conditioner to make sure it was working, but now that it is working, it can be turned off.

Both of these rooms would benefit from a technology that permitted the Air Conditioner to be switched off when no one is around. We here at Redshift Wireless are working on that. As of today, we are working on a version of Climate One which has an Built In PIR to automate energy savings even further. If you are interested in either product, either using it or selling it, let us know.