Our company used to retrofit boiler work, and in two buildings that I recall (a 5 and 4 story) we were asked to install dummy thermostats in a few offices.
Thermostats that did absolutely nothing. We were asked to disconnect the old ones, and put in new honeywell types that were wired into thin air.
Reason? The women in the office would constantly jigger them around and it drove the building managers nuts, because he would then get calls all day from the rest off the floor.
Radiant heat is like that, and it was costing him too much I guess for his boilers to be operating all day.
He said the particular women would have the temperature way up, and the rest of the floor would have windows open and fans going, he just saw it as money going out the window (literally).
He even went and bought them space heaters (out of his own pocket). Nope, didn’t work.
” The women in the office would constantly jigger them around and it drove the building managers nuts, because he would then get calls all day from the rest off the floor.”
Spot On!
I ran a commercial building for several years. The thermostats did nothing if you adjusted then, they were really just sensors for the computer driven HVAC system that was controlled by the computer in my office.
I got many calls a day complaining about it being too hot AND too cold from the same floors. I could print out hourly zone temp readings for the entire building, and could instantly tell if there was a problem. All the temperature problems were sitting behind a desk.