Condo managers have the unique role of making sure that an entire condo building is running smoothly. One of the ways they can do that is by making energy efficient choices in the building’s common areas. We’ve talked about ways for a homeowner or condo owner to save energy, but condo buildings have distinct challenges and opportunities we think are exciting to mention.

Here are some tips for reducing your building’s energy usage:

1. If you have common areas with manually operated lights, you’re relying upon your residents to remember to turn the lights off when the area isn’t in use, like in a laundry room or a storage space. Installing occupancy sensors ensures that energy is only being used when needed.¹

2. Parking garages, commercial spaces, and outdoor parking lots are often frustrating to light because of the time and cost to maintain them. Induction lighting lasts 100,000 hours and has low CO2 emissions. Induction systems transmit energy through magnetic fields and often come with a 10 year, 60,000-hour warranty.²

3. Install air dampers to keep outside air out when it is too hot or too cold, but to allow air in when it is an ideal temperature and the building can use the outside air. Building codes do require certain amounts of outside air, but with air dampers, you can limit having to cool and adjust warm humid air in the summer or heat it in the winter. ³

4. Rotate your heating, air conditioning, and water heater cycles with load management. If everything is on at once, it causes peaking and will be billed at a higher rate. Load management will even out major energy usage and make sure that they rotate their cycles.⁴

5. Try not to air condition laundry rooms. Because clothing dryers need to exhaust air, you want to make sure that this air isn’t conditioned. Why use energy to condition air that will be removed from the building? Use vents instead and pull air from outside to replace what the dryers are getting rid of.⁵

These five tips are only the beginning.

¹ Condominium Smart Tips
² Green Building Certification
³ Apartment Condominium Energy Tips
⁴ Apartment Condominium Energy Tips
⁵ Apartment Condominium Energy Tips