news tickers, time systems, fire alarms, watchmen’s system)
8. Service of Power Supply (Includes all power for the special uses of tenants or occupants)
9. Service of Appearance (Includes all decoration, architectural treatment and special finishes not essential to the structural services)
In general the relative importance of each such service is affected differently by the general requirements determined by the use to which the building must he put. Each service must he evaluated accordingly before an intelligent budget of first cost, fixed charges, and operating costs can be prepared. Without a budget based on some such functional analysis, the probable return on the required investment remains an indeterminate guess, and no accurate formulation of the most economical and efficient solution of the architect’s problem as a whole is possible. Furthermore, the analysis must take into account not only initial conditions, but also ultimate conditions at the end of the amortization period, for as has been pointed out above, the service and operating requirements of buildings are changing very rapidly — so rapidly, in fact, that it becomes a question whether or not we may come to consigning buildings to the scrap heap just so soon as they have outlived their economic usefulness, precisely as is now done with machine tools and locomotives.
This method of preparing the data about which an intelligent design may be drawn, is the method employed in setting up an engineering project, whether it be an electric motor, a steel mill, or an extensive hydraulic power development.
From the viewpoint of the operation of the building, the several items included in the different service functions outlined above, may be classified either as static if they do not require a supply of power, or dynamic if they do require a supply of power. The dynamic functions are elevators, sanitation, water supply, heating, ventilation, artificial illumination, signaling and communicating systems, and tenants’ power supply.
Generally, except heating, all of these services are electrically operated. Each year the demand upon all of them has progressively increased, until, at the present time, the average and peak electrical load per sq. ft. floor area in commercial buildings has reached, and in many cases exceeded, the average and peak loads per sq. ft. floor area in electrically-driven manufacturing plants.
The average load in shops employing diversified small tool units will reach about 2. 0 watts
per sq. ft. floor area, although with the increasing use of automatic tools and intensive methods of manufacture, requiring improved illumination, these values tend to increase until in certain shops operated at high production efficiency, the average combined light and power load may reach 4. 0 watts per sq. ft. floor area. The average load in a busy modern New York office building is 2. 5 watts per sq. ft. floor area. Over restricted areas such as a machine operated accounting department, the load may considerably exceed this value.
A large modern high-class office building, say of approximately 200, 000 sq. ft. gross inside floor area will absorb about 1200 horse power in motors for the operation of elevators, sanitation, ventilation and water supply alone. In the average machine shop using individual drive on the tools, the average motor may be taken at approximately 3. 0 horse power, so, in a sense, the power required for these purposes in the building may be taken as roughly equivalent to a group of 400 motor driven tools! But this is a large factory.
Furthermore, this building will be equipped by the tenants with about 1500 small and fractional horse power motors for the operation of local ventilation and motor-driven office machinery, the use of which during the last few years has rapidly increased.
If the requirements for artificial illumination be taken as a connected load of 2. 0 watts per sq. ft. of yield area, and it certainly should not be less, at least 360, 000 watts in lamps will be required, or roughly, eighteen hundred 200 watt lamps and luminaires.
The problems connected with the economical generation or purchase and distribution of the power required to operate electrical devices of so large an aggregate capacity are of considerable complexity. Obviously the electrification of the modern building has ceased to be a mere wiring or “lighting” job. It is a problem in distribution and utilization approaching in importance the similar problem in an industrial plant. It is a problem whose economic and engineering phases must receive adequate study if the system is not to prove inadequate, or if serious waste is to be avoided — not only waste in first cost, but waste in operation and in maintenance.
The dynamic equipment of buildings is no longer of minor importance. This is the thing that makes the building work, and more and more are buildings being classified as to rental value by the quality of the dynamic services that they render. If a building does not work properly no amount of decoration, no emphasizing of its appearance, will help. It, is a failure.
8. Service of Power Supply (Includes all power for the special uses of tenants or occupants)
9. Service of Appearance (Includes all decoration, architectural treatment and special finishes not essential to the structural services)
In general the relative importance of each such service is affected differently by the general requirements determined by the use to which the building must he put. Each service must he evaluated accordingly before an intelligent budget of first cost, fixed charges, and operating costs can be prepared. Without a budget based on some such functional analysis, the probable return on the required investment remains an indeterminate guess, and no accurate formulation of the most economical and efficient solution of the architect’s problem as a whole is possible. Furthermore, the analysis must take into account not only initial conditions, but also ultimate conditions at the end of the amortization period, for as has been pointed out above, the service and operating requirements of buildings are changing very rapidly — so rapidly, in fact, that it becomes a question whether or not we may come to consigning buildings to the scrap heap just so soon as they have outlived their economic usefulness, precisely as is now done with machine tools and locomotives.
This method of preparing the data about which an intelligent design may be drawn, is the method employed in setting up an engineering project, whether it be an electric motor, a steel mill, or an extensive hydraulic power development.
From the viewpoint of the operation of the building, the several items included in the different service functions outlined above, may be classified either as static if they do not require a supply of power, or dynamic if they do require a supply of power. The dynamic functions are elevators, sanitation, water supply, heating, ventilation, artificial illumination, signaling and communicating systems, and tenants’ power supply.
Generally, except heating, all of these services are electrically operated. Each year the demand upon all of them has progressively increased, until, at the present time, the average and peak electrical load per sq. ft. floor area in commercial buildings has reached, and in many cases exceeded, the average and peak loads per sq. ft. floor area in electrically-driven manufacturing plants.
The average load in shops employing diversified small tool units will reach about 2. 0 watts
per sq. ft. floor area, although with the increasing use of automatic tools and intensive methods of manufacture, requiring improved illumination, these values tend to increase until in certain shops operated at high production efficiency, the average combined light and power load may reach 4. 0 watts per sq. ft. floor area. The average load in a busy modern New York office building is 2. 5 watts per sq. ft. floor area. Over restricted areas such as a machine operated accounting department, the load may considerably exceed this value.
A large modern high-class office building, say of approximately 200, 000 sq. ft. gross inside floor area will absorb about 1200 horse power in motors for the operation of elevators, sanitation, ventilation and water supply alone. In the average machine shop using individual drive on the tools, the average motor may be taken at approximately 3. 0 horse power, so, in a sense, the power required for these purposes in the building may be taken as roughly equivalent to a group of 400 motor driven tools! But this is a large factory.
Furthermore, this building will be equipped by the tenants with about 1500 small and fractional horse power motors for the operation of local ventilation and motor-driven office machinery, the use of which during the last few years has rapidly increased.
If the requirements for artificial illumination be taken as a connected load of 2. 0 watts per sq. ft. of yield area, and it certainly should not be less, at least 360, 000 watts in lamps will be required, or roughly, eighteen hundred 200 watt lamps and luminaires.
The problems connected with the economical generation or purchase and distribution of the power required to operate electrical devices of so large an aggregate capacity are of considerable complexity. Obviously the electrification of the modern building has ceased to be a mere wiring or “lighting” job. It is a problem in distribution and utilization approaching in importance the similar problem in an industrial plant. It is a problem whose economic and engineering phases must receive adequate study if the system is not to prove inadequate, or if serious waste is to be avoided — not only waste in first cost, but waste in operation and in maintenance.
The dynamic equipment of buildings is no longer of minor importance. This is the thing that makes the building work, and more and more are buildings being classified as to rental value by the quality of the dynamic services that they render. If a building does not work properly no amount of decoration, no emphasizing of its appearance, will help. It, is a failure.