Green Building Elements: Building Controls

For all our technological advances, our buildings remain incredibly dumb constructions. Automobiles have multiple onboard computers that help maximize their performance and improve efficiency and coordinate the various systems. But the average house has very little, if any, control to aid in its operation despite the wide range of conditions (from below freezing winter nights to scorching summer days) they are forced to deal with. Even large, complex buildings operate with fairly minimal control systems. Yet we expect them to provide a standard comfortable environment for us year round.

We need some smarter building controls.

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Some building controls are already available. The oldest and best known is the simple thermostat. A thermometer control that turns on heating or cooling, depending on the temperature. It doesn’t do much, but it does help to regulate furnaces and air conditioners to keep the temperature within a range of few degrees. But, temperature is not the only factor in comfort. Reducing the humidity can sometimes be all that is needed in warm weather. If the temperature is not too hot, the cooling effect of a breeze may be better than running an air conditioner. But a thermostat can’t do that for you.

Light sensors are another control that can be beneficial. When daylight is sufficient for lighting a space, the control turns off lights in the space. (More sophisticated systems gradually lower the light level rather than abruptly switching the lights off and on, and can sometimes be completely unnoticed by the occupants of a space.) Sometimes, though, even daylight can be glaring.

Room occupancy sensors are becoming more commonplace. For infrequently occupied rooms, they can be quite useful. My office has a sensor wall switch in our library which only cost $20 or so. It’s convenient for us, too, because the light switch is in an awkward location. Now, you just walk in and the lights come on. The sensor also has a manual override, so it is possible to turn the lights off (as we do when we use our wall projector for presentations).

All of these systems are reactive, however.

As autumn advances, we’ve had very hot days around here recently, but it has been getting very cool at night. The air conditioning was on in my office the other afternoon. But an hour later, we were all headed home for the evening, and the next morning, it was cold in the office when I came in. Letting the temperature float a bit in the afternoon would have been a better approach, and just let the building cool down on its own overnight.

There is a lot of room for developments in making homes more sophisticated without requiring everyone to become a building engineer. As we push for increasingly efficient operation of our homes and buildings, this kind of advance is going to need to become commonplace. But there’s no perceived market for it yet, so it remains a lagging field without much development taking place.

Some systems for home automation are available. The X10 standard for controlling devices allows a wide range of controls to be operated from a computer. But these are still very much seen as high-end luxury options, rather than basic components that should be incorporated into every home.

Inexpensive, user-friendly building control systems that increase the level of sophistication for our buildings is a field that holds great potential.

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