Tropical HVAC Design

Let's talk about energy! Easy improvements to tropical HVAC design today :

1. ACs are often placed at room-top, this is fine; however air filters should be located at room-bottom, sending clean air upwards for cooling - otherwise dirty air travels upwards, an anti-pattern.

2. When AC is in use, a heat exchanger pattern is required to allow stale air to egress and fresh air to ingress, while minimising heat ingress to the cold room.

3. Heat exchangers can also link the walls and floor of a building to any cooler earth beneath, or around it.

4. Wherever heat exchangers are needed, a consideration may be made for copper or aluminium heat pipes of a large calibre. The careful design of such structures should ensure easy maintenance, and durability or replacement.

5. When water is in abundance, heat pipes can play a crucial role in the design of indirect evaporative cooling. Evaporator chambers may consist of  arboreta, decorative water features, or simply misted cooling towers.

6. AC condensate should always be recycled for its evaporable qualities, perhaps closer to AC condensors.

7. Heat pumps and expander-generators may be considered for the recovery of energy from AC systems.

Designing Payscales

 So my first job in the corporate sector (2006) was in doing salary surveys. I just tried to sketch out a new salary model for a company that's got to deal with lockdown economics. People argue about wages all the time. But the basics are simple.

1. Inequality metrics matter : watch medians and means.

2. All the following points need to be considered within the local universe of a sector's unit economics, margins, volatility, and sales cycles. (Maybe we can unify these variables into a more complete model later.)

3. Everyone should have a really low fixed pay, that's high enough for their subsistence. 

4. Everyone should have variable pay, tied to scoped periodic performance ( team / area / company / group / etc. ) , simply as a fraction of revenue or profit, paid out on a periodic basis that varies by sector. (Delay too long, and bad people hang around too long. For example F&B should just do pay-outs monthly for most staff.)

5. You can tag on long-service bonuses, but they have to be relatively linear.

Got any more ideas? Hit me up in the comments.