Time to Check Those Leaky and Stuck Valves
January 2, 2024
As the weather changes and you switch units into heating mode, stuck heating coil valves and leaking cooling coil valve issues will become more prominent. Fixing these building maintenance issues now can help you avoid significant wasted energy from simultaneous heating and cooling, as well as reduce the number of hot and cold calls.
In this blog, we’ll highlight how Clockworks’ fault detection and diagnostics software—specifically, our AHU Coils and Zone Unit Analysis—can provide root-cause diagnostics for simultaneous heating and cooling or comfort issues. More specifically, we will highlight two valuable charts that can help identify coil valve issues: the Coil Temperature and Valve Positions Chart and the Actual vs. Ideal Heating/Cooling Rate chart.
To explain, let’s explore a simultaneous heating and cooling issue where cooling is occurring while the cooling coil valve is closed.
Pinpointing Coil Valve Issues:
A Simultaneous Heating/Cooling Example
Cooling Coil Chart
When we look at the first chart for Cooling Coil, we can see the valve position (blue dash) is 0%, but the cooling coil discharge air temperature (red) is several degrees lower than the entering pre-heating coil discharge air temperature (green) and setpoint (yellow). This indicates the cooling coil valve is leaking while it is commanded shut.
As with all of Clockworks’ identified issues, you can click through to dive into the detailed diagnostic analysis.
Actual vs. Ideal Heating/Cooling Rate Chart
The Actual vs. Ideal Heating/Cooling Rate chart visualizes the resulting waste energy and costs from excessively heating or cooling or operating simultaneously. We can see the actual heating (dashed red) and actual cooling (blue) compared to the ideal heating/cooling (black).
Energy Opportunities by System Type Dashboard
Clockworks also provides a comprehensive suite of building analytics dashboards. Our Energy Opportunities by System Type dashboard can be easily filtered to coil issues to quickly find stuck or leaking valves.
Learn More About Fault Detection and Diagnostics
Interested in learning more about how real-time HVAC analytics from a fault detection and diagnostics system like Clockworks could help your organization? Our Building Analytics Comparison Guide is a great starting point to understand the differences between systems and how to think about implementing FDD in your organization.
Or, request a demo to see it in action.
