“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — we’ve all heard this well-worn adage before. It seems to make sense on the face of it, and sometimes it actually does. But all too often it is used as a justification for postponing important projects that could deliver immediate benefits.

 

If your building is like most buildings, you’ve got at least one major piece of mechanical equipment that is over 20 years old. But old building equipment — e.g. boilers, chillers, and common area light fixtures — tends to be pretty simple and dependable. As a result, with appropriate maintenance, you can often keep these old workhorses running long past their expected lifetimes.

 

But just because you can keep that old boiler running for five more years doesn’t mean you should. By maintaining old boilers past their expected lifetime, you may be effectively burning money. That’s because new, high-efficiency boilers can probably do the same job using 40% less energy. Why waste your money maintaining aging, inefficient boilers that you will eventually need to replace anyway when you can replace them today with something that will pay for itself twice over in energy-savings?

 

The point here is that there is a significant cost of waiting for your old equipment to die. That cost is the foregone energy savings you would have benefited from if you’d replaced it earlier. For example, if new high efficiency boilers will cut your gas bill by $15,000 a year, the cost of waiting five more years to ‘get your money’s worth’ out of your old boiler is $75,000 — probably more than the cost of the new boiler! So while keeping your old equipment running a few more years might seem like the prudent choice, it is often anything but.

 

The other problem with keeping your old equipment until it dies is that it almost always breaks down when you need it the most. Old boilers don’t die in July when its 28 degrees outside; they almost always expire during the coldest months of the year when they are working hard. You end up in an emergency situation where you must buy a new boiler immediately, without shopping around to find the most efficient and most affordable product. And if it has to be replaced on a weekend, you’ll be paying twice as much to install it. Not to mention the headache you’ll receive from hearing all the complaints from fellow resident left in the cold. It’s the same story with chillers, which always choose the hottest, muggiest day in July to permanently pack it in.

 

Another old workhorse that many buildings are still keeping around is the T12 florescent fixture — most often found in parking garages, stairwells, and basements. These simple fixtures will often remain operable for decades, but they actually waste significant amounts of energy. Replacing them with a modern T8 fixture with an electronic ballast can cut your lighting energy-use by 30% or more, and the energy savings will usually pay for the project costs in two or three years. That means that over 10 years, those new T8 fixtures will likely earn your building a return on investment somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300%!

 

Clearly, controlling your energy-use isn’t just the environmentally responsible thing to do, it’s also the financially responsible thing to do. Utility costs are the single largest controllable cost for almost any condominium. You can’t do anything about your property taxes, for example, but you can do something about your energy costs. By doing so, you’ll increase your building’s cash-flow and create resources to pay for other important building improvements. And the best news is that most buildings have a variety of cost-effective opportunities to reduce their energy-costs by 20% or more!

 

So how do you know if you have old energy guzzling equipment wasting money in your building? Start by getting some professional advice. An energy audit will identify all the major opportunities to save energy in your building, and government rebates are available to offset the minimal cost of the audit. You’ll end up with a prioritized list of energy conservation investments for your building and an estimate of the cost and payback for each measure. This valuable audit report can guide your building’s energy conservation efforts for years to come.

 

You may also want to start an energy committee or green committee to manage project implementation. This can take some of the workload off of your Board of Directors, and is also a great way to engage other interested residents.

 

Best of all, there are generous government and utility incentive payments available to subsidize the cost of energy conservation investments, whether it’s a more efficient boiler, a lighting retrofit, or any other kind of project. Our free TowerWise Conservation Advisor Service — sponsored by the Canadian Condominium Institute, Enbridge, and the City of Toronto — is here to help you gain access to incentive programs and get started with a retrofit today. If your building is in the 416 area code, pick up the phone and call Mara Del Bianco at advisor@towerwise.ca or 416 931-1463, Mara can provide free advice and one-window access to incentive programs that can help you reduce your gas, electric and water bills.

For more advice on how to pursue energy efficiency opportunities in your condominium building, and a case study of a successful project, check out our TowerWise video series at www.towerwise.ca/videos. You’ll also find a variety of other useful decision making tools on our website, including our energy investment calculators (www.towerwise.ca/calculators).  You can input the costs and expected savings for your energy projects, and get a detailed financial analysis including return on investment and internal rate of return.  

 

The key point is that renewing your building’s major mechanical systems — heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting — isn’t just a cost, it’s an investment than can offer real, low-risk returns in the range of 15-40% annually when you look at it over a 10-year time horizon. So don’t wait for things to break down — look for cost-effective opportunities to renew your building and reduce utility costs today.