Needless to say, it’s been a wee bit hot out in New York City. As the heat wave finally crests so that temperatures are a cool 80 degrees as I write it, the heat has settled into the city like an unwelcome house guest. It fills every nook and cranny with uncomfortably stale air and the smells of New York in the summer. It is indeed a pity the days can’t be like the nights. New Yorkers though have a special dread of summer. It’s hot outside, but it’s worse underground. The heat traps of the subway system, made even warmer with the exhaust from subway cars pushing the mercury up higher, create unpleasant rides on a good day. At least, we think, the air conditioned subway cars offer a respite from the warmth. But what if it all goes wrong? For a while on the site, when summer dawned, I would dive into the history of bringing air conditioners to the subway system. We haven’t yet solved the platform problem (although new deep-bore stations offer climate control), but after three decades of starts and stops, the MTA introduced a fully air conditioned fleet of subway cars by the mid-1980s.

The ceiling fans seen in the old rolling stock at the Transit Museum seem simply quaint these days. Lately, though, certain air conditioners have begun to fail. Most notably, the single-compressor units in the R62A cars — what you might know as the 1 and 6 trains — have been plagued with outages. electricity cost of window ac unitThe problems began in bits and spurts a few years ago, but with the sustained heat, the issue has exploded in a wave of Tweets directed toward @NYCTSubway, and a transit agency that can’t do too much more than acknowledge the problem.window ac unit without a window Kate Hinds at WNYC has covered this story tirelessly this summer because she, like the rest of us, is wary of getting into the so-called hot cars. how many years does an ac unit last

In late July, when she first wrote about the problem, the MTA explained that they field reports via social media, log them and try to figure out when to address them. The R62As are particularly prone to outages. These 30-year-old cars are due up for scheduled maintenance and have one compressor rather than multi-unit HVAC systems which are easier to repair. But the problem has been the repeat offenders. Hinds revisited the story this week, and either the problem is growing or people are paying more attention. The MTA, which still claims only around 12 reports today, has fielded upwards of 30 air conditioner complaints on Twitter each day this week, and may cars are repeat offenders with early reports stretching back to mid July or even early June. Simply put, the problem is not going away. Again, these issues are two-fold. First, the MTA doesn’t have the leeway to take one car out of service. Due to the way trainsets are coupled, removing one car from service basically torpedoes half of a ten-car train set.

If the MTA took all of the problematic cars out of service, it wouldn’t have nearly enough rolling stock for peak hour demand. (By my count, at this point, around 40 or more different 1 and 6 train cars have been flagged for AC outages. I’m sure more hot cars are out there that haven’t been reported yet.) Second, while the MTA acknowledges that the R62As need scheduled maintenance, the SMS process can take nearly two years. These cars aren’t getting fixed overnight. It’s bad solution to a design problem that isn’t getting fixed any time soon. We’re going to be hearing about hot cars until the R62As all undergo scheduled maintenance, but it would behoove the MTA to be upfront about this. Right now, they’re asking New Yorkers to report hot cars but are essentially saying that we have to keep riding them until the agency can find a solution. Beware then those emptier cars in an otherwise crowded train. It’s going to be hot in there. Categories : View from Underground

Older Bard AC condenser Need a home inspection in Minnesota? listing of Minnesota certified home inspectors. Re: Older Bard AC condenser Originally Posted by jfrederick Doesn't really matter how old it is ... the fan should be drawing air in thru the coil side/fins and blowing it out thru the fan side/grille. For a unit that old it's likely a replacement fan that wasn't wired correctly. A pretty easy fix for a service tech who knows what they are doing ... Thank you Sir, just wanted to double check. "working together to get-IR-done" Chris Walsh David A. Andersen & Associates Clarksville - Nashville Home Inspector Lic#40 ITC Level III Thermographer Cert#1958 Building Science Thermographer Cert#33784 HVAC Certification EPA Cert#2046620 See us old farts are good for something I have worked on Bards many times had enclosed electrical sub-stations with Bard package units hung on the exterior wall for cooling never did like them hard to work on some PE designed the unit and never worked on them some Bards had reverse air flow on the condenser some did not and If memory serves me there was an old york unit the same way

Just goes to show ya that even after 25 years you can run across unusual situations ... And I see mechanical designs from guys with no practical experience all the time. Last one was 14 forced air heat/cool systems for a commercial building with everything looking good on paper ... only problem was the furnace drives were not big enough for the cooling coils ... ... Just looking at the equipment schedule it looked wrong, but nobody bothered to check it. All the ductwork was then wrong too ... Probably the same guy who designed the older Bard units. I'm thinking mostly about debris being blown on the coil fins and damaging it. You could change the fan/direction, but if thats the way they are designed it's probably better to just leave it alone and service it more regularly. And your dating yourself again Charlie ...Women may have finally smashed through the glass ceiling to join men in the boardroom but when it comes to office temperatures they are yet to come in from the cold.

A new study has shown that air conditioning units are designed for the body temperature and metabolism of men and leave most women shivering . Most climate control systems in modern offices are based on the resting metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man, which runs up to 30 per cent faster than a woman’s. So while men are comfortable in the workplace, the majority of women would need conditions to be nearly four degrees warmer, leaving them forced to don jumpers and cardigans in the summer to keep warm. “The main message is that in the current standards the value for the heat load of a building is based on an average male. This overestimates the metabolic rate of women on average by 20 to 30 per cent,” said lead author Dr Boris Kingma from Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. “We do not recommend a specific range of room temperatures, instead we point out how metabolic rate differs between males and females, and how important it could be to take this into account when defining indoor climate standards.”

The issue of gender bias in air conditioning was thrown into the public consciousness in July when Washington Post journalist Petula Dvorakwrote a column claiming office heating was ‘another big sexist plot.’ “It’s the time of year desperate women rely on cardigans, pashminas and space heaters to make it through the workweek in their frigid offices,” she wrote. But while supporters across the world applauded her comments, others were quick to blame women for wearing too few clothes in the summer. “Gosh, it’s almost as if the people wearing heavier clothing might be warmer than the women in linen dresses would be,” said New York blogger Cassy Fiano. However the new study suggests women really are suffering in a chilly workplace. When researchers tested young women performing light office work, while dressed in a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, they discovered that their optimum temperature was 75F (24.5C). Men, in contrast, were happiest at 71F (22C)

Current air conditioning standards are derived from research conducted in the 1960s which was based on the resting metabolic rate of one 11 stone, 40-year-old man. Men typically have more heat generating muscle than women and so feel comfortable at cooler temperatures. Metabolic rate also lowers with increasing age which means that an older workforce is likely to need higher office temperatures. The authors have called for a new system that takes into account gender differences, as well as age and physiological characteristics such as being lean or obese. “The current standard does not include a variable to account for body composition of building occupants. We show how this could be done in the future,” added Dr Kingma. They claim it would not only make staff more comfortable but could also cut emissions. "These findings could be significant for the next round of revisions of thermal comfort standards - which are on a constant cycle of revision and public review - because of the opportunities to improve the comfort of office workers and the potential for reducing energy consumption,” said Dr Joost van Hoof, from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.