When Tim Newkirk and his wife, Kristy, went shopping for a home more than a year ago, heating and air conditioning issues were not at the top of their list. In fact, they weren’t on the their radar screen.
“This was our first home and we were sort of overwhelmed by the all the details,” Tim Newkirk recalls.
Since moving into a two-bedroom condo at Concord City Centre, at 208 W. Washington St. in the Loop, more than a year ago, however, the Newkirks have become more interested in heating and cooling–its comforts and costs–than when they were shoppers.
Like an increasing number of downtown condo buyers, the Newkirks live in a building with a central water-based system of heating and cooling called a four-pipe system.
Though not new, the four-pipe system–with a hot water heating pipe and return pipe and a chilled water pipe and return pipe for each residence–has surged in popularity.
The system is more sophisticated–and more expensive–than the two-pipe system so familiar to many Chicagoans who live in buildings where on a certain date–such at March 31 or Nov. 1–the heat is switched over to cooling or vice versa. And builders say the system is more energy efficient, quieter and takes up less space than individual heating and cooling equipment in each unit.
Builders say that, in general, the system offers maximum comfort and efficiency with a minimum of maintenance and fuss.
The Newkirks control the temperature in their unit with a wall mechanism that slides from low to high setting. The slide mechanism controls a fan behind a vertical coil-like radiator in a closet or behind a wall in the residence. Water that has been heated in a central boiler or cooled in a building chilleris drawn through the coil and the fan blows heated or cooled air into the condo.
After a year’s experience, Newkirk says the system “actually works pretty well . . . I like it better than in a lot of the larger buildings where they turn the heat on at a set time and off at a set time. We have access to both heating and cooling.”
Although he longs for a programmable control like a digital thermostat, cost-wise the system is an improvement on the combination of room air conditioner and baseboard hot water heating the couple had in a previous residence, an apartment in Old Town.
“You do have to manually turn it on and off,” Newkirk says. “It is not automated by any means.”
By comparison, in Old Town, he said, “we had window air conditioners which are not very efficient” that pushed their summertime electrical bills to $90 or $95 a month. Newkirk estimates his summer electric bills this year were in the $30 to $35 a month range. The cost of maintaining the centralized system is part of the monthly condo assessment.
“It is the Cadillac of systems,” says Roger Mankedick, executive vice-president of Concord Homes, which installed the system in Concord City Centre, an office building converted to condos, and will use it in the Parc Chestnut, a new loft condominium in River North.
The benefit of the four-pipe system is “most important during the shoulder months of September, October and November or March, April and May, when there are variations in temperature,” says Kris Schwengel, vice-president of construction for Magellan Development Group, which opted for a four-pipe system at its Caravel and Park Alexandria condominium buildings and will use it at Admiral’s Point, now under development.
“Unlike older buildings where the heat goes off March 31 even though it is still cold and does not go on again until Nov. 1, as long as the boiler is turned on residents can still get heat,” he said.
“As long as the chillers are running, you are still able to serve chilled air . . . It gives you the ability to have the temperature you want.”
The range in indoor temperatures residents want during those months should not be underestimated, says Ron Cohen, president of Chicago-based Melvin Cohen & Associates, a consulting engineering and design firm specializing in heating, venting and air conditioning, plumbing, fire protection and electrical design.
“The north side of a building is a different climate than the south side,” says Cohen. “The guy on the north side will need a lot of heat. Some residents on the south side of the building may want air conditioning.”
Ron Shipka Jr., principal of Enterprise Cos., compares the system to the dual temperature controls for air conditioning and heating now available in automobiles.
“If we were driving south, your window on the passenger side would be receiving direct sun from the west,” he says. “Yet you might want to dial down the air flow on your side.” His company installed a four-pipe system at Huron Pointe, 421 W. Huron St., and will use it at Two River Place, a 17-story loft building at Huron Street and the Chicago River.
The system has advantages over in-unit heating and cooling systems, too, says Jim Plunkard, a principal in Chicago-based Hartshorne + Plunkard Ltd., the architects who worked with Concord on the City Centre conversion and designed the Parc Chestnut.
“You don’t have any equipment in your unit and you don’t have the noise; so it’s much quieter,” says Plunkard. The water-heated air has more humidity and is more comfortable than drier gas-fired forced air, he says.
There are other reasons builders are opting for the system. Now controlled largely by computers, the newer 4-pipe systems can monitor temperatures with pin-point accuracy for maximum comfort and fuel efficiency unlike the manual system of the past.
Elimination of an in-unit furnace can add a few more precious feet of living space to already expensive real estate. There is no need to put a view-obscuring condenser for the air conditioning on the balcony or deck. And with the elimination of such in-unit equipment, there is minimal in-residence maintenance.
There is “the advantage of very few parts, very little that can go wrong,” says Schwengel of Magellan.
The centralized four-pipe system is more energy-efficient than smaller individual heating and cooling equipment because of bulk energy buys, says Kamal Taj, chief mechanical engineer for Melvin Cohen and Associates. And, he adds, the system has an expected service life of 40 to 45 years.
The four-pipe system has one big drawback–initial cost–which is why builders often have opted for other alternatives, says Plunkard.
Shipka estimate estimates a four-pipe system can add $2,500 to the price of a unit in a building of 170 units or more.
Some of that reservation have been overcome, however, as the battle for buyers, particularly upscale buyers, has intensified in Chicago’s downtown market.
“We’re in a market where things are very competitive,” says Plunkard. “Five years ago people just expected heating and cooling came with the unit.” Today most buyers want to control their own heating and cooling, too.
Cohen says construction costs must be balanced with estimates of what the intended buyers will be willing to pay. And not all systems can be used in all buildings, he notes.
“There is a split system with a gas furnace within the dwelling and a remote condenser on the roof. This would be similar to the heating/cooling system used in many single-family homes,” says Cohen.
“Since it is not a central system, each owner has his own unit. If he is going away for 6 months, he turns off the heat or air conditioning and does not pay for it.”
The advantage of this system is not paying assessments for central systems, notes Cohen. But not every building can use the system because “there is a height or distance limitation” for the coolant.
When that distance is exceeded, as it is in larger complexes, builders “turn to a central system of two-pipe or four-pipe heating and cooling.”
