Testing, Adjusting & Balancing
Comfortable, Low Noise and Odour free environments at a Reduced Operating Cost are the result of professional Testing, Adjusting and Balancing!
Correctly balanced air conditioning systems produce the best possible environment for the building occupants at optimal system efficiencies significantly reducing your running and repair costs during the life time of your building. Testing, Adjusting and Balancing (TAB) is a vital part of an overall Commissioning plan and is an integrated process that must be followed to achieve the best possible results. Carrying out the TAB works correctly on every new building is an important first step in achieving efficient and comfortable operation and ensuring correct plant life. Older buildings may not have been correctly balanced during construction and retro-balancing can have a very significant positive impact on running costs and occupant comfort. Even if balanced at an earlier time, rebalancing is required as a result of fit out changes and equipment ageing. It is therefore recommended that systems be rebalanced every 3 to 5 years. When remodelling a building the existing installation and the new design should be studied by a specialist TAB company to provide professional advice which will ensure the systems can be rebalanced and made to work efficiently once the work has been completed.
Working to a commissioning plan with a specialist TAB company with appropriately qualified and experienced engineers, will help you to get the best out of your investment.
Equipment that has been tested and commissioned does not always perform to specification or as expected. It is not uncommon to find that systems cannot be properly balanced, become unstable or simply won't work as designed.
TAB education, training and examination programmes required for all Forsspac TAB staff show their full value as TAB engineers step in to resolve often difficult to locate system design or installation problems. Solutions draw upon the vast wealth of knowledge accumulated by the TAB trained engineers with additional support available from their highly experienced mentors.
Drawing on these expert resources means that at the end of the TAB process you can be sure that the building services will be well balanced, energy efficient and as close to design intent as it is possible to achieve.
Working to international standards the TAB specialist will certify the completed works, signifying that the building complies with the standards of the certifying body.
Testing is the process of making sure that performance of plant and reticulation systems is measured and recorded against design specifications to establish the starting point for adjustment.
It is at this stage of the work that it becomes clear which systems need to be adjusted to achieve the desired balance conditions.
Adjusting is the process of systematically changing the settings on valves and dampers, adjusting fan speeds and pump impellers etc. to cause the flow rates and pressures in all systems to match design specifications and building requirements.It is during this phase that construction defects, equipment and system specifications issues are finally confronted and resolved. Sometimes equipment and installed reticulation has to be changed to resolve the problems encountered. This generally happens when the pre-TAB testing and commissioning phase has not been executed to a proper commissioning plan.
Balancing is the systematic process by which the reticulation is adjusted to obtain the correct flow at every terminal unit. All adjustment results are collated and verified against design specification to demonstrate that each and every system has efficiently achieved the required level of balance. Attention is paid to system dynamic performance to make sure that none of the systems is unstable or likely to introduce significant fluctuations in flow or temperature that would make the environment uncomfortable. By working to international standards it is possible to identify and correct system conditions that may lead to inefficiencies, noise, odour and at the extreme, Sick Building Syndrome.
Acceptance and Handover of the building systems to the key holder should happen one system at a time until the whole building has been tested, adjusted and balanced.
Handover also means that a complete set of test results will be made available for inclusion in the O&M Manuals which can then be used as a comparative base for all future work on the building systems.