So I was at work and I heard what sounded like occasional dripping above the ceiling.

mattmia2

I looked above the ceiling and saw this:

Steamhead

Some sort of radiant cooling?

Canucker

Is it a chilled beam set up? What dehumidifies the air and is it working properly?

SuperTech

Lol, yeah I'd say a little bit of pipe insulation would go a long way toward stopping the dripping and pipe sweating.

hot_rod

uninsulated, but at least labeled

mattmia2

Chilled beam. They are running the air handlers about 2 hours a day to conserve energy while the buildings are mostly shut down so it isn't getting as much chilled, dehumidified air as it was designed for. Still should have been insulated. I'm sure there was a meeting.

hot_rod

Looks new? Has it gone through an entire cooling season?
Dewpoint controls?

mattmia2

Building was built in 1980, was renovated 6 or 7 years ago. It is fine when they run the air handlers on the normal schedule. Now that they are running them for only a few hours a day to save money when the building is minimally occupied and it has been warm and rainy for the past few days it has begun raining indoors.

hot_rod

Yeah, not a great operating condition. Regardless you would think the pipes would be insulated in a potentially warm ceiling space like that?

mattmia2

I think moron was what I said when I stuck my head in the ceiling and saw what was happening.

Apparently that building attracts experiments that look good on paper but don't work out in practice. When the building was new it only had chilled air distributed with no reheat, it only had radiation around the perimeter. The theory was that if you make up for the heat loss at the exterior you don't need to add heat anywhere else. It always had cold spots in the winter before the renovation.

EdTheHeaterMan

the insulation guy also sells drop ceilings. So a little condensation might get me a new ceiling job in a few years.