Temperature Complaints
What do you do if you have a customer or tenant who is continually complaining about the temperature?
You can wander in and check if it is too hot or cold, but chances are everything will be fine when you drop by. Or you can check the records in your BMS system if you have one, but it will be fine because the sensor is the point that is being controlled.
Which leaves you with an upset customer and a standoff.
A good solution is to leave a temperate logger with them on their desk or on the back of their chair. Then you know what the temperature is throughout the entire day. You can download the results to a PC and show them straight away. If there is a problem you can see it and if there is no problem then they can see it.
In a recent conversation I realised there is actually the ideal product for this – the Logtag Temperature Logger. The reason why it is ideal is because of the pushbutton event recorder. You just tell the customer to push the button when they feel the temperature is too hot or cold. This gives you a number of benefits:
1. In the graph you will see marks for where they pushed the button. You can see if there was a temperature spike or drop at those times. It is much more precise than “yesterday afternoon sometime”.
2. You can see how often they really do care. If they are pushing the button a number of times throughout the day then it is an issue for them, but if it is only occassionally pressed then it isn’t a continuous issue.
3. You can start to look for patterns.
Temperature is a very subjective issue. I sit at a desk for most of the day. The office could be just right and then I go for a walk to the shops and return. The office is now too hot. The temperature hasn’t changed, but my perception has. This is the type of pattern you can pick up with the marks.
Another interesting one is the location of windows. Windows are very effecitve at warming up a specific area. Since air-conditioning is controlling the air temperature, the overall office temperature will be fine. The air-conditioner may be working a bit harder because of the sunlight, but anyone directly in the sunlight will be experiencing significantly higher temperatures (see https://onsolution.com.au/blog/heat-absorption-science-experiment/. Once again, time of day is the key indicator for this.
So if you do have a customer or tenant complaining about temperature then consider leaving a Logtag Temperature Logger with them. It allows you to get away from personal opinion and start to deal with facts.
