Shit, the BBS ate my post. I suppose I should read how to save posts...

Anyhow, here goes again. Bear with me on the long explanation of the system...

Office building A/C systems are different than home/car systems. In your home (unless you have a multi-zone system), there is a single cold evaporator coil that has refrigerant running through it. This gets cold, and a fan blows air through it, cooling the air. The ducts carry this cold air throughout the house.

Office buildings don't work that way because they are so large that the air won't stay cool by the time it gets to a distant office. How these systems work is that the "chiller" cools water instead of air. This "chilled water" is pumped through the building and encounters heat exchangers that service small areas -- usually just a few offices for each heat exchanger. There is a valve on the heat exchanger that opens and closes to control the flow of cold water into the coil. This valve is controlled by a thermostat somewhere near the exchanger. Here's the important part: each sensor/exchanger is independently adjustable! Your office is in a "zone" that is serviced by a specific chilled-water heat exchanger.

The building engineers are able to adjust this heat exchanger and make your office cool. They absolutely can do this. The difficulty is getting them to do it. Making requests through facilities is a sure-fire way to make sure this will never get resolved.

What you want to do is cultivate a friendly relationship with the building maintenance engineers. They have an unnoticed and thankless job, so all you really need to do is notice them and appreciate them. You make a nice comment or two about how things always are repaired right away and everything works in your building. Actually, all you probably need to do is ask them for help. Asking a specific *person* for help in a respectful way is not something these guys are used to (I used to work in a building engineer department while in college). Most of them are really nice guys who feel that the "suits" all look down on them as "janitors". They are amazed when someone appreciates them and would do anything to help someone who was pleasant to them and recognized their job is a highly skilled one. If you're lucky, they might invite you to tour the "penthouse" which is the mechanical room on the top floor of the building and you can get to see the chiller itself. If you've never seen one before, a 600hp compressor is a pretty cool thing.

As an aside, I once got a tour of a big mechanical room after talking with the building chief engineer. Turned out this guy was a former superintendant engineer at our big local powerplant (600MW) and held a high-pressure steam boiler "chief" certification. Very skilled work, and most people saw him as a janitor.

The other way you can cool your office is the way I cooled my classrooms in high school. You figure out where the thermostat is for your zone, and you bring in the necessary tools to adjust it (I needed a small torx to remove the cover and a long 3/16" hex wrench to adjust the target temperature). If you go this route, don't tell anyone.