I've had enough! I was going to include this in my third "Question Thread," but I can't wait until I have more questions to pose this one:

What can I do to cool down my office?

I think I asked about portable air conditioners before, but since I can't run the exhaust anywhere, I'll broaden my question. I was warned when I started this job that my office would be warmer than average. I should have known that given my distaste for heat, this would not be pleasant. I also didn't believe them that it was the sun that did it. Sure enough, I'm on the southern side of the building, so sun is beating down on my row of offices all day long every day. I just recently put a thermometer in here so I could proove to people that I'm not just crazy. It turns out that my office is always at least 76 degrees (F), and on average it's about 79 and gets up to 82. That is unacceptable, but apparently there's nothing I can do about it. The building people don't really care, and the air vents in these offices don't do the job. Apparently they're designed to push the heat out at the ceiling horizontally. That's great, except this concept sends the cold air cascading down the window, meaning it's getting burnt up by the sun. Great planning!

So does anyone have any suggestions? I really need to do something about this, as it's affecting my work and my alertness. I remember someone once posted an article here about some study that showed people are more likely to fall asleep when their offices are cold. I don't know where they got their findings, because I've fallen asleep at the keyboard three times in the last two weeks. Fortunately nobody saw me.

Before anyone says "get a fan," well...don't say it. Fans don't do jack. When it's 80 degrees in your stuffy office, fans are useless. I've even thought of trying some of the projects listed here, but I wanted to get peoples' opinions here first.

I would just get a portable a/c, stick it as close to me as possible and vent the exhaust back into the office. If they don't like the heat the exhaust is contributing, they can fix the building's cooling system.

I don't know how much pull you have there though and such defiance could result in something worse than the heat.

If you have a drop ceiling, you could probably also just stick the exhaust hose up there. There's nothing toxic coming out of it as far as I'm aware... just hot air.

Can you put reflective coatings on the window? Would that keep the window from heating the air?
How hot is the rest of the office?

Yeah, I'd bet that the primary source of the heat is the window. If you could figure out a way to block that energy from coming in at all, you'd solve the problem.

Large window-sized piece of cardboard coated with foil on the outer side?

http://www.ehow.com/how_12030_reduce-indoor-heat.html

I would try steps 4 and 5. I have the honeycomb blinds and love them.

Window reflective coating info
Freshly googled from the internet to you!

Shit, the BBS ate my post. I suppose I should read how to save posts...

Anyhow, here goes again. Bear with me on the long explanation of the system...

Office building A/C systems are different than home/car systems. In your home (unless you have a multi-zone system), there is a single cold evaporator coil that has refrigerant running through it. This gets cold, and a fan blows air through it, cooling the air. The ducts carry this cold air throughout the house.

Office buildings don't work that way because they are so large that the air won't stay cool by the time it gets to a distant office. How these systems work is that the "chiller" cools water instead of air. This "chilled water" is pumped through the building and encounters heat exchangers that service small areas -- usually just a few offices for each heat exchanger. There is a valve on the heat exchanger that opens and closes to control the flow of cold water into the coil. This valve is controlled by a thermostat somewhere near the exchanger. Here's the important part: each sensor/exchanger is independently adjustable! Your office is in a "zone" that is serviced by a specific chilled-water heat exchanger.

The building engineers are able to adjust this heat exchanger and make your office cool. They absolutely can do this. The difficulty is getting them to do it. Making requests through facilities is a sure-fire way to make sure this will never get resolved.

What you want to do is cultivate a friendly relationship with the building maintenance engineers. They have an unnoticed and thankless job, so all you really need to do is notice them and appreciate them. You make a nice comment or two about how things always are repaired right away and everything works in your building. Actually, all you probably need to do is ask them for help. Asking a specific *person* for help in a respectful way is not something these guys are used to (I used to work in a building engineer department while in college). Most of them are really nice guys who feel that the "suits" all look down on them as "janitors". They are amazed when someone appreciates them and would do anything to help someone who was pleasant to them and recognized their job is a highly skilled one. If you're lucky, they might invite you to tour the "penthouse" which is the mechanical room on the top floor of the building and you can get to see the chiller itself. If you've never seen one before, a 600hp compressor is a pretty cool thing.

As an aside, I once got a tour of a big mechanical room after talking with the building chief engineer. Turned out this guy was a former superintendant engineer at our big local powerplant (600MW) and held a high-pressure steam boiler "chief" certification. Very skilled work, and most people saw him as a janitor.

The other way you can cool your office is the way I cooled my classrooms in high school. You figure out where the thermostat is for your zone, and you bring in the necessary tools to adjust it (I needed a small torx to remove the cover and a long 3/16" hex wrench to adjust the target temperature). If you go this route, don't tell anyone.

Thanks to everyone for the great responses! I appreciate the help. I'd like to address some of the suggestions:

1) I would love to do the whole "portable AC with exhaust to drop-ceiling" thing. I just worry about how my office manager would react. She got me the job, essentially, so I don't want to step on any toes.

2) reflective coating/cardboard with foil: I've thought about the reflective coating, but again, I worry if that's overstepping my bounds. I could put cardboard up, but I just left a job that felt like I was in a basement. I would love to keep the natural light and the view.

3) honeycomb fabric blinds: I'm sure I wouldn't be allowed to replace the blinds, unfortunately

4) be nice to the maintenance people: I like the building people a lot. They're cool guys. I just don't think there's anything they can do. I think this has been a problem since far before I got there, and nothing's been done about it.


At the moment, I think I might look into Robotic's link and consider that. It sounds like the best possibility.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Maybe you could try a change in workwear?

I don't know if you consider this to be outside your bounds or not, but how about some window tint? Even slight tints can reduce the heat transmission significantly. You can even get some that are static cling, so you don't have to worry about semi-permanent modifications.

I had the same problem in my old room - it was facing the east with windows running along the entire room. The temperature during the summer in there was around 90F, and the way the ventilation was set up was that the cold air actually pumped in to the room furthest from the hot windows. My desk was next to the windows, so it was incredibly warm (especially since I grew up in a lot colder climates than this ).

Don't underestimate how much a simple fan will help. I have one of the 18" desktop oscillating fans and it worked wonders.

I might try fans again, as much as I was opposed to them in my initial post. It's just that I tried them in my previous office (at my last job) which was also very hot, and it didn't do anything. At the moment I just have a little dinky fan that doesn't seem to do much, and I still think it's just moving the hot air around, plus it doesn't get all parts of your body.

It looks like I was wrong about what the temperatures would be when it gets cold. It got really cold around here last night, and when I got in this morning my office was about 68. I love it! I'll just have to see what happens when people start turning on their radiators. I'm glad I can at least turn mine off completely.