Controlling your energy budget

Real Estate Weekly, August 19, 1992 by Gerald Pindus

With spiraling fuel and water costs, keeping your energy budget under control is no easy task. But there is help: energy-saving systems that provide accurate, reliable information about your entire heating system.

Computerized energy-management systems are the most efficient means of controlling fuel costs. There are two types of systems: those that regulate a heating system based on the inside temperature of an apartment and those that regulate it based on the outside temperature.

Outside temperature systems are unreliable: the outdoor sensor can activate a boiler even when the indoor temperature calls for lowered heat. Buildings with such systems (or no systems at all) are the ones with all the open windows during the winter.

Computerized fuel monitors that regulate the boiler according to apartment temperatures are the most accurate systems available. The sensors, placed strategically on the inside of the building, activate the heating plant based on actual apartment temperature.

U.S. Energy Controls' system, for example, generates accurate apartment temperature readings and uses this information to efficiently control your heating, system. The more accurate the information, the more opportunity you have to burn less fuel and save more money.

When your boiler operates inefficiently, you spend more money on fuel. You also risk breakdowns and serious damage to machinery. Efficient operation, on the other hand, saves fuel, electricity, and water, and reduces pollution and wear-and-tear on your equipment.

To help uncover boiler inefficiency immediately, U.S. Energy Controls has developed a "call-out" feature for all boiler systems. If the boiler is running poorly, or if there is a threat that the heating plant may shut down, the callout system immediately dials the phone numbers of key building personnel. A computerized message alerts them to the problem, ensuring quick response and less wasted fuel.

Hot water eats up a large chunk of most buildings' fuel bills. And with water metering on the horizon, owners will pay for the amount of water they use, as well as the fuel they use to heat it.

To control hot water costs and detect leaks, we have developed a domestic hot water monitoring device. Attached to your boiler, it monitors the amount of water that passes in and out. This can uncover serious problems.

For instance, if your boiler is constantly being replenished with new water, it means that there is a leak in the heating system.

One of the best ways to uncover waste and keep track of fuel deliveries is to monitor how much oil goes in and out of your storage tank. The old way of doing this was with a stick: the super would open the tank hatch, insert the stick, and measure the level. Not only was this method difficult and time consuming (and seldom done), but it was strict guesswork.

To give you accurate readings, we have developed a fuel-level gauge. Available for all storage tanks, it offers a wealth of important information: how much fuel is in your tank; how much fuel you are using by the hour, day, week, or month; how much has been used between two specific intervals; how much fuel is delivered; the time of the delivery; and, in the case of number 6 oil, the temperature at which the fuel is delivered.

Ask any of the 500 buildings where our controls have been installed: accurate, computerized systems help make controlling energy costs easier. And these days, building owners need all the help they can get.