Hot Water Use in Hotels (Results of ASHRAE RP 1544) Part 1: Hotel Hot Water System Monitoring Techniques (OR-16-030)

This is the first in a series of technical papers written to describe results of ASHRAE research project 1544. Hot water use in hotels and its associated energy use is significant. However, information on hotel hot water use patterns has been limited until now, resulting in most hotel hot water systems being designed using extremely old hot water use data (45-80 years old) that predate the introduction of water and energy efficient fixtures and appliances. In recognition of this fact, ASHRAE funded research project 1544 “Establishing Benchmark Levels and Patterns of Commercial Hot Water Use – Hotels” to both develop a monitoring methodology that could be duplicated by others to collect hot water use data from a larger number of hotels, and to obtain updated hot water use information from at least two hotels. This first paper describes the technique used to locate and solicit participating hotels, details about the hotels tested, and the instrumentation, data collection approach and equipment used in the field test effort.