Word: airings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...summer and no higher than 65° F in the winter, and that hot water settings be turned down to 105° F. Should Carter decide to implement the measure this week as planned, workers in some 5 million such buildings would suddenly find themselves deprived of the air-conditioned comfort to which they have become accustomed...
Carter's energy-saving proposal stirs a lot of hot air...
...Hamilton Jordan found relief by throwing open his White House windows, but millions of office workers who would be affected by the new edict have no such option: most new commercial buildings are steel, aluminum and glass cocoons, hermetically sealed against the weather-and cooling breaths of air...
...stuffy environment in such buildings falls well outside the comfort zone as determined by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers: temperatures of 72° F to 78° F, humidity of 20% to 60%. The engineers' studies also show that under unfavorable conditions, worker productivity falls, on-the-job accidents increase, and employee errors rise. Not to mention frustration levels. "What we're up against," declares Fred Crawford, director of the Center for Research in Social Change at Atlanta's Emory University, "is having our personal freedoms and choices so circumscribed that ordinary...
Personal inconveniences aside, Carter's edict has also raised complaints from engineers. Merely setting the thermostat at 80° F, they argue, may actually waste energy. Many air-conditioning systems have not been designed to work efficiently and humidify properly at such levels. Matters are further complicated by "the solar load": as the sun moves around the building, room temperatures inside can rise by as much as 5° F. "You can't just set office thermostats like you do those in a home," explains Larry Wethers, a building-systems assistant for Chicago's 110-story Sears...