New President, New Year, New Challenges
2025 is a New Year, and our HVAC community of designers, builders, and equipment manufacturers need to 'Reflect and Move Forward!'
Another year has come and gone, and a new year of possibilities lies in front of us. With a new U.S. President, we will have to wait and see what his agenda will be as it pertains to climate change, global warming, and energy conservation. The American people have spoken, so we need to accept the outcome and proceed in a positive direction.
So often, I have experienced individuals who "look at the glass half empty" while I have always "looked at the glass half full." Years ago, the company I worked for had a client who, after schematic design, wanted to replace our firm as the HVAC design consultant for a major new hospital building. Our senior engineer was determined to provide a constant volume reheat system throughout this 350,000 square foot pediatric facility. The hospital's senior facility engineer wanted to stay with the existing HVAC system design in the two adjacent buildings, but our design engineer would not budge, thinking he was providing the best system for their application.
I have always had the attitude to ask "why not" versus "well, what did we do the last time we had this situation?" Over the years, the HVAC community has seen continuous changes in system applications, types of equipment, more energy-efficient equipment, new HVAC systems to manage utility consumption, and reduce energy usage. Our industry is familiar with the phrase "3-steps forward and 2-steps back." We need to proactively accept the 2-steps back but not give up on the forward direction.
When the energy crisis initially hit us, we reflected and reacted. Automatic temperature controls changed and continue to adjust with AI (artificial intelligence). Before the 1972 energy crisis, the fuels of choice were #6 and #4 oil that would be reactively replaced with #2 oil and natural gas. Steam heating, as well as steam absorption, were set aside for hot water heating and then further modified to outdoor compensated hot water heating. Production of chilled water went from absorption at first to electrical chillers. Now there are absorption units fueled by natural gas, high-temperature hot water, and heat recovery, to mention three sources. Managing the air-conditioning demand, thermal energy storage (TES) came in the form of chilled water storage and ice storage applications.
Refrigeration transitioned from one stage and multiple stages to variable refrigerant flow (VRF). These VRF systems went from straight cooling to heat pump heating and cooling via air-source or water-source production. This particular change also came with the benefit that heat pump applications could now be applied to the residential community, whereas chilled water systems really were not practical in the residential marketplace.
Designing equipment rooms and their optimum locations were exposed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It raised awareness of the problems associated with locating HVAC, as well as electrical equipment, in rooms at grade or below grade. The word "resiliency" has found itself in the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers Society (ASHRAE) vocabulary, and now we must apply its definition to our design engineering solutions.
And then there was COVID-19, where ASHRAE pulled together its crisis management team of specialists to offer solutions for protecting human beings, as well as procedures to return vacated pandemic-era facilities to healthy occupant spaces.
So, here we are in 2025, needing to make more course corrections to proactively and continuously improve the HVAC products we specify and design so that we can take an additional 3-steps forward! The challenge of continuous improvement is a quality control initiative where we must ask "why and why not."
What can we do to address the global warming issues that seem to increasingly affect climate change? Will electricity be the primary utility service mover now, in lieu of natural gas, propane gas, and fuel oil? Will solar power be the cost-effective next solution over natural gas? Will fuel oil be phased out in its entirety? Will electrical battery storage be the next solution over thermal storage? Will the design of HVAC systems be more resilient than in the past, so as to avoid natural disasters such as flooding?
So, this year, let's implement a "why not" attitude to building programs and accompanying design-engineered solutions. Our industry needs to reflect and move forward, applying new construction and renovation designs and construction procedures such as integrated project delivery (IPD) method team efforts over design-bid-build (DBB) and construction management (CM) project delivery methods.
2025 is a New Year, and our HVAC community of designers, builders, and equipment manufacturers need to "Reflect and Move Forward!"
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