SustainabilityJacob DunnJacob Dunn

Even Buildings Need Owner's Manuals: The George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center

SustainabilityJacob DunnJacob Dunn
Even Buildings Need Owner's Manuals: The George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center

Buildings with complex, constantly changing, and intermittent occupancy require easy-to-use controls that can respond to the building's changing heating and cooling needs. Without such systems, it can be too convenient to run buildings in "occupied mode" all of the time, which results in wasted energy. The Jazz and Heritage Center's performance hall and after school music program creates this type of intermittent occupancy that changes by event season and semester. During the center's first school year, classes only totaled 7 hours a week over the course of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Adding to the complexity of the controls, the building was designed with two separate HVAC systems from two different manufactures, one for the classrooms and one for the performance space. Controls were accessible through a two different touch screen panels mounted in the electrical room, but the owner and maintenance team did not want to operate the HVAC system or reconfigure control sequences through the touch screens. Thus, the architecture team translated the engineering sequence of operations and controls submittals into an owner-friendly controls guide that balanced comfort and energy. The guide covered mapping different equipment HVAC zones, suggestions for occupied and unoccupied temperature/humidity settings, and suggested levels of occupant override control for the classrooms and event space. The intent is for the owner to integrate the guide into the HVAC maintenance contract, so that building controls can be updated by a contractor on a schedule according to the document.

Performance Metrics