A unit owner shared a very good question with us this week, which we wanted to share:

“It seems the cooling starts at 8:00am when there has been a cool night. The sun rises at 5:15, so the east side of the building bakes for over 3 hours before the cooling kicks in. Apartments have 3 hours to heat up to 80 degrees inside. Is there a reason the chillers don’t turn on till 8:00 am  on mornings when there were cool nights? It is true the AC system went off last night due to the cool temperatures.”

Perhaps other Owners and residents have wondered about this. The answer?

There is not a set time, rather there are set temperatures. (And for more about this visit: https://www.ptcondo.com/heating-vs-cooling-4/).

There are points where we cannot force our chillers to remain running so cold, as it can cause the chillers to surge which can damage them and other parts of the network. We reached that nexus at least a couple times overnight. Our set point right now is 58 degrees which the outdoor temperatures fell to and actually below into the low 50s for some time overnight recently.

If we continued running cooling even on the lowest setting for our system, surging would have occurred and it is even possible for some lines to freeze up if we forced water to continue chilling and circulating.

However, in each occurrence we analyzed our log shows the system came back on between 5 and 6am which makes sense because that is around sunrise and things start heating up quickly once the suns energy hits the building and our surroundings. It then takes some time for the water to circulate through the miles and miles of pipe in the system and cooling can begin.

For anyone that is sweating a bit will the chillers are reinitiating, we certainly sympathize if you feel any discomfort. But, we really can’t run the chillers at such low temperatures.

Nonetheless, don’t hesitate to ask your questions or report discomfort. We can’t address any potential problem, if we are not aware of one. Write anytime, to parktowercondo-mgmt@habitat.com.

They have a similar system where I live, and I myself took advantage of the opportunity open my windows, and let some fresh air in. It was great – low humidity and not to cool to overcome the ambient heat of the building!

It is an awkward time of year, with how early the sun comes up and hits the Northeast facing units. We shared this question with our maintenance team, and asked they do their best if there is ever any adjustment at all possible for days where we expect full sun but low morning temps.

However, we have to have reasonable expectations. At such low temperatures there are some hard stop limitations.