Page 22 - Climate Control News magazine Oct-Nov 2022

Residential Air Conditioning
Building forecast to 2026
LEFT: Medium to high density construction will be hit the hardest.
population growth, MBA said activity will fall significantly short of this until 2026.
MBA CEO, Denita Wawn, said activity on the medium-high density side of the market is likely to be particularly slow.
“While pandemic conditions brought forward some residential building demand, the current economic conditions of interest rates hikes, inflation increases, and continued shortage of workers and materials, are significantly contrib- uting to the decline,” she said.
The outlook for non-residential building activity (social, cultural, retail, commercial and warehousing) is reasonable with a small decline in 2023 but steady increase from 2024 to 2026.
Civil and engineering construction is likely to show the strongest performance of the three sectors of the industry and while a small decline is forecast for 2023, growth is forecast for 2024-26.
MASTER BUILDERS AUSTRALIA (MBA) has released an update to its forecasts for the build- ing and construction industry out to 2026.
In the post-pandemic economic environ- ment of interest rate rises, surging inflation, and unemployment at a 50-year low, the lat- est forecasts indicate that activity is still
likely to expand modestly over the medium term despite the effect of short-term challenges.
However, there will be considerable variation in the pattern of growth by subsector.
Even though about 200,000 new homes need to be built each year to accommodate long-term
Combining IAQ with smoke detection
HONEYWELL HAS LAUNCHED a first-of-its- kind solution that combines early warning smoke detection with advanced indoor air qual- ity (IAQ) monitoring, furthering its efforts to create safer and healthier buildings.
Built on the flagship VESDA-E line of aspirat- ing smoke detectors, the VESDA Air solution has a unique five-in-one IAQ sensor within a single box, which can help improve building safety by identifying life safety, asset protection or IAQ issues before they escalate into problems.
VESDA Air complements Honeywell’s ready now Healthy Buildings solutions that can help improve occupant well-being, meet energy effi- ciency goals and, importantly, change the way occupants experience a building.
Honeywell’s VESDA technology actively sam- ples air rather than passively waiting for smoke to reach traditional spot sensors, to identify trace amounts of smoke and enable early inter- vention before it disrupts operations.
Honeywell engineers have integrated into the same VESDA system a highly sensitive IAQ sensor that measures critical IAQ parameters, including volatile organic (11 total VOCs) listed by ASHRAE as contaminants of concern, fine particulate mat- ter of 1.0 micron (PM1.0) and PM2.5 or larger with unprecedented accuracy, CO and CO2 concentra- tion, temperature and humidity.
Ideal for premium commercial buildings, healthcare facilities, hospitality, manufacturing
and schools, the new sensor provides instru- ment-grade IAQ sensing for data uniformity and accuracy.
Honeywell Building Technologies vice presi- dent, Udaya Shrivastava, said the emphasis on indoor air quality isn’t going away and that’s a good thing.
“More organisations need to work to create safer, healthier environments that help boost occupant well-being and productivity,” Shrivastava said.
“THE SYSTEM IDENTIFIES SMOKE BUT ALSO THE PRESENCE OF AIR QUALITY CONTAMINANTS.”
“We challenged our engineering teams to find a way to complement the capabilities of our aspirating smoke detection systems with highly sensitive IAQ monitoring.
“The system identifies not only the minute presence of smoke, but also the presence of air quality contaminants of concern, allowing building operators to react and respond to out- of-bounds parameters quickly, before they esca- late into unsafe situations.”
Honeywell’s Udaya Shrivastava
The plug-and-play cartridge-based IAQ sen- sor works much the same as replacing a print- er’s ink-jet cartridge, thus avoiding costly calibration and other maintenance. This con- venience helps to reduce total cost, minimise waste and provide accurate IAQ data.
The scalable solution can be used in both new construction and existing buildings. In new construction, installation of an integrated VESDA Air solution can reduce the total cost of installation (TCI) and total cost of maintenance (TCM) as compared to installing and maintain- ing standalone smoke detection and IAQ moni- toring systems.
In buildings with a fully functional smoke detection system, a ‘smokeless’ IAQ-only system can be installed to provide accurate, actionable data to adjust ventilation parameters.
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