Energy Costs Slashed for Apartment Owners

Sept. 22, 2008 - PRLog -- Energy Costs Slashed for Apartment Owners  

The Building Monitor™ announces a new energy monitoring system for apartments, with a timely reduction in energy costs of up to 50%.  


The Building Monitor™, a Seattle-based engineering services company, has announced the availability of their first major product, The Building Monitor™.

The Building Monitor™ is a groundbreaking, integrated hardware and software electronic monitoring system designed with the apartment building owner in mind. This innovative system monitors, identifies and reports heating and cooling system failures as well as exposing energy waste and abuse by apartment residents.

Monitoring points are located in each apartment and hallway through the installation of specialized digital thermostats which interface with sensors on all heating valves and connect to a zone valve control board.  Collected data is then transmitted to a main controller console located in proximity to the common boiler, cooler or gas meter.

This data, which is recorded every minute of the day, all year long, is uploaded to the company's website.  Apartment management can access this data for review, evaluation, disposition or temperature manipulation and control of all or selected apartments.  For system faults of any nature, building management is automatically sent an email with critical data such as, building address, unit #, and specific nature of the problem.

Examples of the data tracked are:  Heat has been requested but not delivered; 2) Heat has been delivered but not requested. 3) Heat has been requested and delivered but the apartment unit remains at a low temperature (A window most likely left open); 4) Temperature in the unit is very cold and close to freezing with no heat requested.

Through the use of The Building Monitor's™ patent pending audit trail, a billing module, which accurately calculates each tenant's energy usage, can be used by management to bill each tenant for actual energy use or for an excess or abuse over legal and generally accepted minimum and maximum temperatures.

Mike Klein, engineer inventor of The Building Monitor™ and multi-unit apartment owner himself, was constantly facing outrageous heating bills. Given the current, extreme rise in energy costs, he decided it was time to find a solution.

As Mike explains, “I had tenants who couldn't turn their heat down because the boiler valves were stuck in the open position.  I also discovered some tenants who liked a lot of heat while a window was left open. (That's right, believe it or not, you'll know if a tenant is leaving a window open and then leaves the apartment to go to work).  I even had a tenant whose thermostat was constantly set at 83 degrees, 24/7 and was using 27% of the building's heat consumption.  This tenant was costing more in heat than was being received in rent.”

Mike summarizes by saying, “I have seen an average savings in my energy costs by close to 50%.  At today's fuel prices, this has returned a lot of money back into my pocket.  From the business perspective, my payback for the installed system was only 15 months while increasing my Net Operating Income (NOI) as well as achieving a higher CAP rate.




Contact: Ken Pulasky, Sales Manager
               Varx, Inc.
              1035 Main Street
              Pitman, NJ  08071

Telephone: 856 589-0053

Email: TheBuildingMonitor@verizon.net

Web: www.TheBuildingMonitor.com

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The Building Monitor is an electronic monitoring device which monitors and controls the temperature in apartments. Sensors on water pipes and thermostats collect heating or cooling data which is sent to the web for action by building management.