Real Estate Management and Maintenance Tips

How To Cool Off A Hotbox

by Marvin Levin

It was a few years before the explosion of energy prices that my friend Pat bought an apartment project in California’s Central Valley. I saw the pro forma numbers before closing, and they looked reasonable.

A few months after the closing, Pat reported to me that the cash flow was, at best, a break even. She admitted that she was suffering the pains of a non-resident manager, and that one number in particular was off the chart. That number was the PG&E bill. The building had been constructed before the energy crunch of 1974 when it was common to have a master PG&E meter instead of individual meters.

She reported to me that her on-site manager said that the air conditioner ran almost around the clock, even though the outside temperature dropped to a reasonable level once the sun went down. That seemed a little odd to me, so I asked a friend of mine who lived in the area to check out the building to see if he could solve the mystery.

Before reading further, can you guess what was the problem?

My friend reported back to me that his inspection revealed the problem to be simple and could be solved at a trivial cost. He said that the building was constructed with a pitched roof and, thus, there was a substantial amount of attic space. To understand the problem, suppose you came back to your automobile on a hot day after it had been sitting in the sun with all of the windows closed. (As you read this, I believe you can almost feel how hot that would be.) Now, suppose you installed an air conditioner under the floorboard of your car and waited for it to cool off the inside of your car. Eventually, the air conditioner would have some effect; but, if you did not exhaust the hot air from the car by opening the windows, it would take a very long time.

By analogy, I am sure you can see the solution. The overheated air in the attic is trapped. A good solution is to have an exhaust fan that is automatically activated whenever the temperature in the attic rises above a certain level. In the subject case, the management was trying to cool the attic temperature indirectly – this is certainly a very expensive approach. It is considerably cheaper to push that hot air out just as you would instinctively do in the case of the automobile hotbox.

If you know of a value-added income property, please contact me.