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Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still functioning?

But the system didn’t work very well at all - in winter, it was freezing cold, and in summer it got too hot. Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!

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> Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!

-At a building I used to work in, management solved that problem by having a contractor bolt all the windows shut so that the ventilation could do its thing.

Only problem was, the ventilation still didn't work, but now we couldn't open the windows.

Sigh.

> bolt all the windows shut

Pretty sure this is a fire code violation in many places

Oh, the building was up to code as we had (at least) two routes from any office space to the outside in an emergency.

It sounds like that scene from the HHGTTG, only in real life :-/

The new Toronto streetcars have AC, replacing the 60s era streetcars.

Now the windows don’t open. Maybe that’s fine for temperature control, but there can be many good reasons to have open windows on public transit.

The reason is the city is loud enough and after a hard day of work you don't want to jump on the streetcar to hear the deafening of the city because someone wants the window open.

The other reason is someone will open the window but not close it and when the AC turns on all the cold air just goes out the window.

My comment is more about smells getting stuck inside.

Aircraft, trains and other vehicles have all tried to emphasize how well they filter recirculated air, but it’s not going to win against an open window in a moving vehicle for airflow.

> ‘smart ventilation’ airflow

I've lived and worked in buildings where airflow was crazy.

You know, you open a door and it goes flying out of your grasp and you have to use your weight to help close the door.

Or doors that would stubbornly refuse to open, fighting suction the first couple inches before the forces would ease up and the door could be opened by mortals.

I lived in one apartment on the top floor, and in winter there was some weird effect where I had to leave the heat on with no fan and warm air would fill the room by convection. If the fan was on, it would quickly become 80 degrees no matter what.

My office has a similar system but in a very simple version. It's just for cooling and constantly pulling air out of the basement into the offices. For a few weeks in the beginning of summer it's working fine but after the basement heats up, it's just shuffling hot air around until the building manager remembers to shut it down. The old building manager was quite good at turning it on at night and off by day to cool the building in summer nights.

I remember reading somewhere that this system had been built again in Germany by a larger corporation that issued a PR statement about that but I cannot find it anywhere.

I worked in Munich, Germany in a building that had this. It was built some time around 2010. Same experience as you had. It didn’t really work all that well. Spring early summer was good. Peak summer was a disaster.

I worked there for a while too! Zeus technology, the subsequent tenant. Very expensive. The ionica sign was still lying in the bushes behind the generator outbuilding.

An additional problem with opening the window was the smell from the nearby sewage farm on some days.

I shudder to think what a "sewage farm" is, but I imagine it is something mundane that just happens to have a name that makes Americans think, "why on Earth would you farm sewage?"

Gotta have a lot of euphemisms for your sewage treatment plant. Apparently they now call it a "water recycling centre"

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ionica/@52.2330937,0.15565...

My guess is a sewage treatment plant? Many of those have parts exposed to the air and don't smell nice.

Opening the window would make me happy, even once in awhile. I understand it’s not feasible in most buildings.

(The thought of going back to closed up modern building is sickening lately. I know it’s coming for myself though.)

Yeah, I feel the same way.

On the one side, I get it: air-conditioned buildings, railway cars etc. must have solid windows so that the system works.

But it does not work emotionally for the humans trapped within. Opening a window and feeling the rush of fresh wind against your face is an important feeling, we are creatures of the vast outdoors by ancient heritage, not cave dwellers.

In Silmarillion, Tolkien wrote that even the High Elves of Valinor need to feel the fresh air of the outer lands from time to time. I would say that this extends to us mortals too.

I have a hunch, though, that often the problem is not emotional but actually physiological. If a ventilation system works well enough that air is not altogether too stale or humid or high in CO2, but not well enough to ensure the air is properly fresh, you could easily start feeling like there's something off, without being able to pinpoint exactly what's wrong. Most office ventilation systems have very few sensors and don't respond to changes in occupancy, or are otherwise hard to regulate, which can easily lead to air quality that is good-enough-but-not-quite-there and a desire to open a window. I've worked in offices that were stuffy all the time, but also in offices that were pleasant winter and summer, and nobody ever complained that the windows didn't open.

That can definitely be. We are absolutely dependent on air, so our air quality sensors are likely to be fairly sensitive.

Unless it's carbon monoxide poisoning...

We're in a pandemic and even now people seem to have a hard time opening windows in northern parts of Europe.

Really

Durchzug mördet!

You got it /s

I know we call these “smart” buildings but in actuality, they are quite dumb. Any kind of building is a technological phenomenon and good engineering is simple. A smart building is one designed to solve climate control problems without requiring complex computer systems. Many indigenous structures around the world were built this way.

HVAC solves climate control. By that measuring stick, I have been routinely disappointed by indigenous structures that claim to have solved climate control but should more accurately be described as "somewhat mitigating the worst of it at enormous cost to the builder, maintainer, and/or operator." They have a lot more in common with the poorly functioning "thermal battery" than with modern HVAC, which is boring, cheap (by comparison), reliable, flexible, and doesn't even require computers -- a bimetallic strip will do, if you must.

> HVAC solves climate control

At a huge energy cost, because we insist on brute-forcing comfortable climates in cookie-cutter buildings, instead of learning from vernacular/indigenous architecture and using modern technology to augment on top of that.

The real crying shame is that air conditioning units could be used as heat pumps (which can be extremely efficient) with just a few added parts, but hardly anyone does that.

I looked into it, but the added cost isn't really worth the effort where I live. They have such a narrow effective temperature range that it would hardly see any use as such.

I'm getting Hitchhiker's Guide vibes from this (Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454). I had no idea the book was this close to reality :-)

this is analogous to software where it is like imposing a solution, which obviously doesn't work, because the management has spent some money on it :)

> a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling

Can you explain how this worked? Or how it was supposed to work? Was it just a literal block of solid concrete? I’m so intrigued and I have so many questions!

Thermal insulators (air) conduct heat poorly. Thermal conductors (metal) transfer hear rapidly, but "hold" onto limited amounts. Thermal batteries (concrete, earth, water, marble) balance heat storage and transference.

Geothermal systems use the ground as a sort of battery- drawing heat in winter, dumping it in summer.

Smart designs will use concrete floors in front of windows to store and release heat from the sun in winter (and rely on overhangs to keep sun out in summer).

Presumably, the concrete foundation (or a really big block) could serve a similar purpose with a hydronic system transferring heat in and out of the block to and from radiators in the rest of the building.

During summer months, run water from the radiators through an evaporative cooling system, to the concrete block, back to radiators. The concrete will cool down when the evaporative system is at peak efficiency, and siphon heat off when it is not.

During winter, instead of going through evaporative cooling, the water could ve pumped through solar heating panels to the same effect- the concrete warms on sunny days, storing excess heat, and bleeds it back to the water on cloudier days.

As you can imagine, the system would be very difficult to get correctly sized for a commercial building, and require backup heating and cooling for anything but temperate weather.

If you've never been in a place intentionally built like this, chances are you've still experienced the effect in the shape of a brick house. Especially in the spring, when the sun is strong but before it's warm, it'll sometimes be enough to cover most or all of overnight heating requirements.

Alas, where I live, tornados are more common than brick houses are (though not nearly as common as some places).

Then again, at the rate lumber is increasing in price, maybe brick will start becoming feasible again...

Interesting! TIL, thanks for the explanation!

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