A typical apartment building in New York City loses thousands of dollars’ worth of energy every year from leaky elevator shafts that vent warm air at the top of the building and draw in cold air at the bottom, a new report from the city’s U.S. Green Building Council chapter says.
The report, Spending Through the Roof, says that owners of apartment buildings spend an average of $3400 a year to heat replacement air for what’s lost through the roof. In taller buildings, the report notes, the cost can be more than $20,000 a year.
Repair costs can range from $500 to $15,000 for a large building. If the leaks were plugged on 4000 tall apartment buildings in the city, landlords would save a collective $11 million a year while keeping 30,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
Holes in the roof were required
Openings in the tops of elevator shafts and stairwells were required by state and fire-department regulations, the report says, as a way of venting smoke in the case of fire. But construction practices and firefighting techniques have changed, so the vents now “are needlessly open all the time.”
Tenants know their buildings are affected when they try to open the ground-floor doors to get in, an article in The New York Times said. “As you try to pull open a lobby door,” the article says, “it seems soldered shut. Wrestle it open, and you are greeted by a shrill whistle and a blast of air.”
How much heat is lost depends on how tall the building is and where it’s located. The report notes that a 15-story multifamily building in a dense neighborhood loses $3000 worth of heat through the roof every heating season. The same building in an area subjected to more airflow (less densely built up) would lose $6500.
Total lost heat in the 4000 multifamily buildings at least 10 stories high would fill 29,000 Empire State Buildings.
The two major options for plugging the leaks are to cover two-thirds of elevator shaft vents with annealed glass, leaving the rest open, or to install a motorized set of louvers that stay closed unless there’s a fire.
Laws governing stairwell vents haven’t changed since 1929, the report says, so there’s no legal way now for building owners to fix the problem.
Fine Homebuilding Recommended Products
Fine Homebuilding receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.
Reliable Crimp Connectors
Handy Heat Gun
8067 All-Weather Flashing Tape
Leaks at the tops of elevator shafts allow hot air to escape and cold air to enter at the bottom of the building, pushing up energy bills by thousands of dollars a year for a typical apartment building, according to a new study. Plugging the leaks is relatively inexpensive.
