Case Study – Gild Hall

Gild Hall, a boutique hotel in lower Manhattan, features 130 guest rooms. A place of character and comfort, it is considered a neighborhood cornerstone. From Gild Hall, guests can walk cobblestone-lined downtown streets, and it is steps away from Wall Street, One World Trade, and the Seaport District. 

Danny Chan is the Director of Engineering at Gild Hall. His tenure at Gild Hall began in 2016, the same year Telkonet’s EcoSmart platform was installed. It didn’t take Danny long to identify a serious climate-control issue in the guest rooms. On the coldest days, the temperature in the guest rooms could dip to 45 degrees. The PTACs, being on exterior walls, would get much colder, causing pipes to freeze and in some instances, burst.

As a solution, Gild Hall installed networked EcoInsight thermostats in every guest room, hard-wired to the PTACs. Using the EcoSmart platform, they configured the minimum temperature in every guest room to 65 degrees, thereby avoiding the freezing and bursting fan coils that had plagued the property on the coldest New York City days and nights.

Telkonet worked with Danny to define a series of customized thermostat settings. Using “profiles” in EcoCentral, Gild Hall can now control the default setpoint, maximum and minimum temperature ranges, recovery time, fan speed, and more, based on seasons of the year, and even load shedding events.

Alerts

Danny is a Telkonet evangelist for more reasons than simply preventing freezing coils. As a busy DoE, Danny appreciates the automated alerts he gets, such as Temperature Protection Active and Device Lost Communication. Danny explains, “Even when I am not in the building if I get an alert I can let my staff know, for example, that a particular room has lost communication. My staff can resolve the problem when the guests are not in the room, and when the guests return, they  don’t even realize there was ever a housecall.”

Prolong PTAC Life

Danny also appreciates that the EcoSmart platform monitors PTAC runtime. “The system does not allow a PTAC unit to run continuously 24/7 non-stop. So instead of replacing a worn-out PTAC unit every year, we have extended the life expectancy of that PTAC.”

Support

Gild Hall maintains a Gold-Level EcoCare support subscription. We asked Danny to comment on his experiences with our EcoSmart support team.”I did call in for support on a couple of occasions and they provided me step-by-step instructions, walking me through troubleshooting and helping resolve my issues. The kind of support I received was great; great technical support for the system.”

Fine-Tuned and Customized

Danny explains that he relies on the EcoSmart platform to be a kind of building management system, far and away more sophisticated than mere smart thermostats. “We have fine-tuned the platform in such a way that it works optimally for Gild Hall. When I consider how we use the platform today, it is just unbelievable. It is a tool, not just for me but for our entire hotel. “

Energy Savings

Telkonet is proud to help Gild House trim their energy expenditure. Gild Hall enjoys eye-popping energy savings of 44%, compared to having no energy management system in place.