Many commercial buildings have offices or boardrooms that have been renovated over the years and often the mechanical heating or cooling systems have not been fully considered in the change. Walls get moved but the hot water radiators on the floor and air conditioning diffusers on the ceiling stay in the original location. This leads to common problems such as the newly added office on the south wall overheating in the summer because there is no ductwork in the room.
The big problem here is that many small commercial spaces “share” a thermostat. Over the years, I have seen many situations where an open plan office with one thermostat has, over time, become several small interior offices with one now very ineffective thermostat that will never be able to control the temperature accurately in these separate spaces. This single thermostat usually controls a perimeter hot water radiator or single rooftop air conditioner. Either way, this lonely thermostat can no longer provide adequate control of temperature to these newly sectioned off spaces.
An excellent improvement in these cases is the installation of a ductless split heat pump. A ductless split heat pump is simply a small heat pump that requires no sheet metal ductwork. A small outdoor unit can sit on a ground pad or be mounted on the outside wall or roof. The separate indoor unit is mounted on the office wall and both are connected with small diameter copper tubing. This makes the units extremely convenient to install in finished spaces.
The new ductless split units or mini splits as they are often called have single outdoor units that can handle up to eight separate indoor units. This makes it very easy to solve the heating and cooling problems in multiple areas of your commercial space. These units are also used to cool the ever hotter and expanding computer server rooms that seem to occupy closets and back rooms of most offices.
The good news is that ductless split heat pumps are an easy technological fix to the many heating and cooling problems found in small commercial spaces. There’s no need to suffer with cold rooms in the winter, stuffy summer afternoons, or inconsistent temperatures from one room to the next.