Survey of the airside systems in Hong Kong

When centralised air-conditioning was extensively used in the Hong Kong office buildings back in the 1960s', people had little concept about thermal comfort and indoor air quality. The demand for indoor climate was a sense of coolness. The energy crisis in 1970s' triggered a compromised design by the building services engineers for energy conservation by the scarification of indoor comfort and health. It was in the beginning of 1990s' that the people in Hong Kong realised the importance of indoor safety and health in terms of indoor environmental quality. In 1999, the Environmental Protection Department circulated an Indoor Air Quality Certification Scheme. Engineers have put much effort in improving the design. However, the provisions to facilitate a proper system operation and maintenance are still inadequate. In case of more concerns about indoor environmental health and comfort, engineers find themselves little clue on identifying problems because the provision of instrumentation in assessing performance of air-side systems of the air-conditioning systems is far less than sufficient. This paper describes the survey in 62 air-conditioned offices with an objective to investigate the provision of instrumentation in air side systems. It is found that less than 50% of the primary air units and air handling units, and less than 70% of the fan coil units are sufficiently facilitated with instrument. The authors also demonstrate how easy it can be to set up a real time monitoring system for such purpose.Department of Building Services Engineerin