Are there regulations on office temperature?

mikemac

Our office has windows but they open to an internal hall, not outside. The air conditioning is out of service.

According to the thermometer it’s a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius in this office now. This is far too high to be comfortable and is definitely affecting my work
I’ve been watching it since April and it’s never been below 18 degrees.

Now the temperature is not so bad in the morning or late afternoon but I’ve often come back from a long walk at lunch and I’ve been sweating at my desk.

Before I contact management to finally fix the air conditioning, is there are any Health & Safety guidelines I can use and they’ve been asked multiple times in the past month to sort out the air conditioning but have never done anything.

J.S. Pill

micmclo wrote:

Our office has windows but they open to an internal hall, not outside. The air conditioning is out of service.

According to the thermometer it’s a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius in this office now. This is far too high to be comfortable and is definitely affecting my work
I’ve been watching it since April and it’s never been below 18 degrees.

Now the temperature is not so bad in the morning or late afternoon but I’ve often come back from a long walk at lunch and I’ve been sweating at my desk.

Before I contact management to finally fix the air conditioning, is there are any Health & Safety guidelines I can use and they’ve been asked multiple times in the past month to sort out the air conditioning but have never done anything.

Forget about regulations - contact management immediately. Such an environment is hellish to work in and will affect work performance so its in management's interest to get this sorted.

I worked in an office last summer with 40 odd people in a confined room, no AC, a few small windows and 40 heat generating CRT monitors. They gave us a fan to share among 3 of us but all that did was flow more hot air in my face every 7 seconds.

At least you have an AC to fix...

seamus

There are of course certain obligations with regards to office temperature, but this question has been asked here before. The general consensus I think was that although the employer has to make sure the office is maintained at a reasonable temperature (save if the working enviroment must be cold or hot, e.g. a smelters), if it just happens to be a particularly hot day/week, then there's not a massive amount you can do about it. Your employer can't control the weather.

On the other hand, if the office is constantly hot or cold (or otherwise uncomfortable), then you can complain to your employer. The HSA has more info:
http://www.hsa.ie/publisher/index.jsp?&1nID=93&nID=97&aID=1517#temperature

It would seem that "hot" is defined as > 27 degress :eek: and cold is defined as less than 17.5 degrees. Though these only seem to be guidelines, not minimums or maximums. The employer has a legal obligation to fresh air and ventilation.

PeakOutput

i used to work in a restarurant in the airport the air conditioning didnt work very well adn there was a thermometer on the wall..........when the thermometer reached a certain temperature we got to stop working............it was around 30-32 im pretty sure this was agreed with unions though and not an obligation by law

BostonB

Our office is the same. Especially mornings and evenings. Part of the problem we find is that in an office of 40 IT people very few of them turn off their PC's at night, or have power saving enabled. The AC can't compete with the heat from all the PC's. The AC goes off at night but the PC's don't. We've given up trying to get people to do the right thing and are trying to get power saving implemented in the group policy, and rolled out across our office and perhaps the entire building. We have the same problem with other equipment like printers etc.

Wishbone Ash

micmclo wrote:

According to the thermometer it’s a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius in this office now. This is far too high to be comfortable and is definitely affecting my work

At least an office job is not generally physically demanding. Spare a thought for those who have to do manual work in high temperatures conditions.

From my experience most of the legislation regardinging temperature is mainly concerned with avoiding low temperatures. I think the logic may be that an employer can raise the temperature of a workplace but, as the provision of airconditioning is not a statutory requirement in Irish law, there is little that can be done to cool down a working environment. In my workplace the temperature is required by legislation to be recorded twice daily but it is generally irrelevant unless it drops below a certain degree level.

BostonB

Wishbone Ash wrote:

At least an office job is not generally physically demanding. Spare a thought for those who have to do manual work in high temperatures conditions....

Might as well say manual work is generally not intellectually demanding. Spare a thought for those who have to think at work.

lostexpectation

micmclo wrote:

Our office has windows but they open to an internal hall, not outside. The air conditioning is out of service.

According to the thermometer it’s a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius in this office now. This is far too high to be comfortable and is definitely affecting my work
I’ve been watching it since April and it’s never been below 18 degrees.
Before I contact management to finally fix the air conditioning, is there are any Health & Safety guidelines I can use and they’ve been asked multiple times in the past month to sort out the air conditioning but have never done anything.

be brave and call the HSA, that will give everybody an excuse to actually do something about the air conditioning...

(2) Where a forced ventilation system is used, it shall be maintained in working order. If an air conditioning system is installed then it must be adequately maintained. To look at it another way we cannot insist that a company install air conditioning but if they have installed it then we can insist that they maintain it so that it operates correctly.

they may figure it was you but you don't have to admit it.


17.5 degrees centigrade and upper level for comfort is 27 degrees centigrade (when undertaking light duties).

that boody hot though isn't it 27 degrees? if you had an option ie working air conditioning wouldn't you want to lower.

Red Alert

in fact by the sound of it you don't have windows to outside at all. in that case the A/c is probably also for actual ventilation - i.e. removing CO2 from you and your workmates and putting in fresh air from outside. which makes it even more serious - the HSA would take a very dim view of that.

yournamehere

it works both ways. I worked in an office where the ac was always on. It was freezing, I'd actually be sitting shivering. When it was switched down/off other people would complain. when it was on a lot of people complained so you can't win really!

Nordie

I think the regulatory temp should be around 20-21 degrees

BostonB

yournamehere wrote:

it works both ways. I worked in an office where the ac was always on. It was freezing, I'd actually be sitting shivering. When it was switched down/off other people would complain. when it was on a lot of people complained so you can't win really!

If you are cold you can put clothes on, but if its too hot...

Stark

BostonB wrote:

If you are cold you can put clothes on, but if its too hot...

Yeah that's my feeling on it. In the place I worked before last, I used to come to work in t-shirt and light pants but I'd still arrive back in a sweat if I had to get up from my desk for something. Reason given: "We're a multinational organisation, most cultures prefer this temperature". Gah, if they're in Ireland, they can buy jumpers. Of course there's the other extreme of the place where I occasionally had to work weekends in a basement where there was no heating on a Sunday and needed to wear a coat and gloves(so my hands wouldn't go numb when using a keyboard) while at work.

DD

Lol, your subject sounds very funny for me.
Listen here : we are few guys in the same office, during the summer the temperature gets very high and we need to keep the air condt on most of the time, we have many computers and 1 server is in the same room. We have a stupid colleague who really believes hes having a heart ache cos of the cold, so he decides many times a day to turn off the air.
I dunno how the .. he got this idea so we are dying inside of heatness and hes worrying he will get sick with his heart, tbh I think hes a little sick ...smwh else.
So when summer comes is really interesting to keep an eye on him and turn that air on again ) funny sometimes, but other times we just want to kill the guy, he doesnt understand, how his heart could ache if we turn on the air ...If someone understands that pls let me know, i never heard of it...
I would understand the heart ache if he would have paid for the consum ), but getting cold and heart pains...beyond my understanding