AS SUMMER approaches a union member’s thoughts turn to....... comfortable working conditions! The TUC in particular has long-campaigned for a maximum temperature in the workplace and now their voice has been joined by the National Union of Teachers. The recent NUT conference in Harrogate backed a motion urging staff to walk out if the thermometer hits 26ºC. Of course, many schools were closed and the teachers and pupils sent home during last summer’s heatwave, anyway.
It is well documented that above a certain temperature a worker’s effectiveness in doing his job is in inverse proportion to the mercury rise but the desire to ensure that employees (and pupils) are provided with acceptable conditions in which to work, leaves the unions with something of a political and moral conundrum. How do you ensure that your members have acceptable conditions in which to work without offending one’s green sensibilities by demanding air conditioning?

While on a practical level, the TUC has fudged the issue by advising workers to “dress down”, many local authorities when building new schools or refurbishing the old have studiously avoided ac. Whether this is through choice or just a lack of funds we do not know but many have gone for passive alternatives like solar shading and/or natural ventilation. This approach, which is even advocated by CIBSE, is also taken up by the Department of Education and Skills which states in its building bulletin: “summer time overheating can be largely eliminated by the provision of sufficiently ventilated thermal mass.”

Unfortunately, while these measures can undoubtedly reduce the cooling load, when the going gets tough you cannot avoid the basic fact that there is no substitute for air conditioning. And many of the NUT’s members are now clearly aware of this fact.

Just as no-one has ever been able to show me an office or commercial building that does not require heating, I have yet to have first-hand experience of a building in this country, the cooling requirements of whose inhabitants is satisfied entirely by passive ventilation measures. I am prepared to stick my neck out and state that they are simply not proven to work in the long term.

And, in any case, why should we fight shy of air conditioning? Local authorities and teachers’ groups need to be educated into the finer points of modern, energy efficient ac systems. Modern heat pump systems have been proven to be just as efficient as the most efficient condensing boiler if applied, operated and maintained correctly.

This, of course, does not get over the initial funding problem, but if increasingly hot summers provoke the closure of so many of our educational establishments, government and local authorities may have no option but to provide the necessary investment.

Neil Everitt

Editor