Automatic Balancing Valves:

How to Increase Energy Efficiency in Historic Buildings

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Historic buildings are the gems are our cities. By maintaining their look and condition we not only are conserving the aesthetics of our communities, we are providing an important value to the image and physical state of our city. As a result, property value increases as does tourism.

Maintenance in buildings with outdated infrastructures, however, can be difficult and due to the poor energy consumption systems, can be costly.

In these cases, manual and automatic balancing valves can be inserted into older technologies to enhance heating and cooling systems that are already in place. Control valves help to more evenly disturb heat and air flow in order to reduce wasted energy. According to the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado, the technology to enhance energy efficiency is readily available and can make a major difference in energy consumption. In fact, with rising energy costs of fossil fuels, it only makes sense to look to how to reduce consumption in every area possible.

Another easy medication that can go a long way is to adjust thermostats that control hot water heaters, refrigerators, boilers and air conditioners. For every Fahrenheit degree the temperature is set back it is estimated to correspond to 3 percent savings, according to the Boulder city website.

For more information on energy saving balancing valves visit the Flo-Pac strainer salve suppliers website.


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What Are The Advantages of Using Automatic Balancing Valves?

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Installing a water system for a heating or cooling unit requires a set of hydronic valves to balance the flow of water.  One must choose between using manual balancing valves or automatic balancing valves.  The difference between the two is explained in the following blog post.  Manual valves certainly do serve a purpose and are appropriate for many projects, especially where the installer needs to set the stems to custom specifications according to the system design.   However, automatic valves have more advantages over manual.

  1. More Cost Effective:  True, the actual automatic balancing valve hardware itself might be more expensive than manual balancing valves, but they only need to be installed at the terminals and not the distribution lines, branches and risers.  This will greatly cut down on installation costs.
  2. Ease of Use – Automatic valves regulate flow according to their pre-set value.  They do not require proportional balancing and require less repeat maintenance to monitor and re-calibrate.
  3. More Stability – There’s always a chance that manual valves will be poorly calibrated, therefore unable to properly read water temperature.  This will result in sudden rises and falls in a building’s temperature because the system will try to compensate for the discrepancy between the thermostat reading and the actual water temperature.

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