VCF Repair workshops and keeping the costs of HVAC down
VCF makes use of the Makerspace and classroom in 9059 during our repair workshops. CDL just cut the checks to cover the first quarter gas bills for their Makerspace (per the IA lease agreement). The total came to $932.00. The cost per therm has gone up. During workshops, we need to keep the exterior doors closed to keep the heat and A/C in the building. How we can help: not allowing the doors to be held open for extended periods of time. Moving things in and out is fine, but keeping it open for extended periods of time increases the HVAC costs. Thank you for your cooperation. ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey@vcfed.org
I'd shut the heat off and left the doors open during VCF East, not sure if it was turned back on at some point during the event. Figured with the nice weather, there was no sense in burning gas! Is that acceptable for when the weather is nice? Thanks, Jonathan ------- Original Message ------- On Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 at 08:43, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
VCF makes use of the Makerspace and classroom in 9059 during our repair workshops.
CDL just cut the checks to cover the first quarter gas bills for their Makerspace (per the IA lease agreement). The total came to $932.00. The cost per therm has gone up.
During workshops, we need to keep the exterior doors closed to keep the heat and A/C in the building.
How we can help: not allowing the doors to be held open for extended periods of time. Moving things in and out is fine, but keeping it open for extended periods of time increases the HVAC costs.
Thank you for your cooperation.
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ http://www.vcfed.org/
jeffrey@vcfed.org
On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 8:47 AM Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I'd shut the heat off and left the doors open during VCF East, not sure if it was turned back on at some point during the event. Figured with the nice weather, there was no sense in burning gas! Is that acceptable for when the weather is nice?
I'd say if the heat was off, then that was fine, because there was no extra cost. But in the future there will be a locked down temperature control which we can't control, so turning off the heat and leaving the doors open won't be possible once they install a Trane XL824 smart thermostat.
Thanks, Jonathan
------- Original Message ------- On Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 at 08:43, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
VCF makes use of the Makerspace and classroom in 9059 during our repair workshops.
CDL just cut the checks to cover the first quarter gas bills for their Makerspace (per the IA lease agreement). The total came to $932.00. The cost per therm has gone up.
During workshops, we need to keep the exterior doors closed to keep the heat and A/C in the building.
How we can help: not allowing the doors to be held open for extended periods of time. Moving things in and out is fine, but keeping it open
for
extended periods of time increases the HVAC costs.
Thank you for your cooperation.
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ http://www.vcfed.org/
jeffrey@vcfed.org
On 5/11/22 8:54 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 8:47 AM Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I'd shut the heat off and left the doors open during VCF East, not sure if it was turned back on at some point during the event. Figured with the nice weather, there was no sense in burning gas! Is that acceptable for when the weather is nice?
Yes, that worked well for the weekend you were there. Other times people leave the doors open and the heat/cool is on. That's the troublesome spot. We're cleaning up the back ramp area to allow the easier access and opening on and closing the other can improve on the heat loss (instead of wide open doors).
I'd say if the heat was off, then that was fine, because there was no extra cost. But in the future there will be a locked down temperature control which we can't control, so turning off the heat and leaving the doors open won't be possible once they install a Trane XL824 smart thermostat.
We're working on that. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
I don't know if they checked the integrity of the system, but I recall one month where it got rather warm and stuffy in the building, even though the thermostat was set at the low 60s. I don't know if that was ever reported. I don't recall that happening in other months since then. Could there be an intermittent issue with the HVAC system? Perhaps an arduino with a temperature sensor could data log mean temperatures every hour for a month to verify the temperature ranges. Jeff Salzman On Wed, May 11, 2022, 8:47 AM Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I'd shut the heat off and left the doors open during VCF East, not sure if it was turned back on at some point during the event. Figured with the nice weather, there was no sense in burning gas! Is that acceptable for when the weather is nice?
Thanks, Jonathan
------- Original Message ------- On Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 at 08:43, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
VCF makes use of the Makerspace and classroom in 9059 during our repair workshops.
CDL just cut the checks to cover the first quarter gas bills for their Makerspace (per the IA lease agreement). The total came to $932.00. The cost per therm has gone up.
During workshops, we need to keep the exterior doors closed to keep the heat and A/C in the building.
How we can help: not allowing the doors to be held open for extended periods of time. Moving things in and out is fine, but keeping it open
for
extended periods of time increases the HVAC costs.
Thank you for your cooperation.
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ http://www.vcfed.org/
jeffrey@vcfed.org
Perhaps an arduino with a temperature sensor could data log mean temperatures every hour for a month to verify the temperature ranges.
I'd imagine Martin can pull temperatures from some of the equipment in the rack: either a server's internal environmental monitors, or a separate room temperature monitor associated with a UPS or something. I'd assume he's already doing that, in fact :P Monitoring and recording parameters is fun. Thanks, Jonathan
Smart thermostat has both internal and external temp sensors, do it’s a nice day, we can pull in outside air. Our SME , Neil Cherry is taking care of the building automation. We are actually looking to scavenge the waste heat from the IT equipment in the winter to scrape up some savings Martin Sent from my iPhone
On May 11, 2022, at 9:02 AM, Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Perhaps an arduino with a temperature sensor could data log mean temperatures every hour for a month to verify the temperature ranges.
I'd imagine Martin can pull temperatures from some of the equipment in the rack: either a server's internal environmental monitors, or a separate room temperature monitor associated with a UPS or something.
I'd assume he's already doing that, in fact :P Monitoring and recording parameters is fun.
Thanks, Jonathan
On 5/11/22 9:19 AM, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Smart thermostat has both internal and external temp sensors, do it’s a nice day, we can pull in outside air.
Our SME , Neil Cherry is taking care of the building automation.
I have my ZigBee interface at home working. Z-Wave will be next and I can dump the SmartThings hub. Home Assistant will handle the automation and interface. I can run plenty of scripts from cron (Perl, Python, bash, etc.) And I have node-red (node.js). Plenty of tools from Linux. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
I have my ZigBee interface at home working. Z-Wave will be next and I can dump the SmartThings hub. Home Assistant will handle the automation and interface. I can run plenty of scripts from cron (Perl, Python, bash, etc.) And I have node-red (node.js). Plenty of tools from Linux.
My friends run HA, but I was always an AMX fan. I run ZWave for the arcade power controls at home and it seems to struggle a little even on short distances. Might be my hardware or an interference source. I should have coded it to to set state on AMX via touchscreens, then change state on device then interrogate device before being satisfied state is set. But instead I just broadcast the on/off command and sit with that. Sloppy on my part and could probably fix it. You could monitor the doors if there is mag switches + alarm panel + RS232 or network option on the alarm panel at the venue. Also might be able to get read only access to thermostat (depending on proprietary it is, my assumption is meet-me in the cloud + API key like Honeywell) and toss alerts if conditions are say door open and outdoor temp extreme and hvac on. - Ethan
On 5/11/22 1:11 PM, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
I have my ZigBee interface at home working. Z-Wave will be next and I can dump the SmartThings hub. Home Assistant will handle the automation and interface. I can run plenty of scripts from cron (Perl, Python, bash, etc.) And I have node-red (node.js). Plenty of tools from Linux.
My friends run HA, but I was always an AMX fan. I run ZWave for the arcade power controls at home and it seems to struggle a little even on short distances. Might be my hardware or an interference source. I should have coded it to to set state on AMX via
You probably need powered Z-Wave modules in between to act as routers (repeaters). They should be good for about 20ft.
touchscreens, then change state on device then interrogate device before being satisfied state is set. But instead I just broadcast the on/off command and sit with that. Sloppy on my part and could probably fix it.
You could monitor the doors if there is mag switches + alarm panel + RS232 or network option on the alarm panel at the venue. Also might be able to get read only access to thermostat (depending on proprietary it is, my assumption is meet-me in the cloud + API key like Honeywell) and toss alerts if conditions are say door open and outdoor temp extreme and hvac on.
IT will be a while before we're that far along. Remember these are historic buildings so we need to tread carefully. The good news is that there are a lot of technologies available that give us 2 way communication. This isn't you're X10 automation. ;-) -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 5/11/22 9:01 AM, Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Perhaps an arduino with a temperature sensor could data log mean temperatures every hour for a month to verify the temperature ranges.
I'd imagine Martin can pull temperatures from some of the equipment in the rack: either a server's internal environmental monitors, or a separate room temperature monitor associated with a UPS or something.
I'd assume he's already doing that, in fact :P Monitoring and recording parameters is fun.
We're not that far along. Though I am getting the hang of Home Assistant for automation control and monitoring. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 5/11/2022 12:48 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 5/11/22 9:01 AM, Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Perhaps an arduino with a temperature sensor could data log mean temperatures every hour for a month to verify the temperature ranges.
I'd imagine Martin can pull temperatures from some of the equipment in the rack: either a server's internal environmental monitors, or a separate room temperature monitor associated with a UPS or something.
I'd assume he's already doing that, in fact :P Monitoring and recording parameters is fun.
We're not that far along. Though I am getting the hang of Home Assistant for automation control and monitoring.
Actually, we do have a monitor in the rack: Room Alert 3S / https://avtech.com/Products/Environment_Monitors/Room_Alert_3S.htm Have a couple more for the warehouse, VCF steering committee is aware of the offer. martin
participants (6)
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Ethan O'Toole -
Jeff S -
Jeffrey Brace -
Jonathan Chapman -
Martin Flynn -
Neil Cherry