Would guess that most people working in an office environment have experienced this problem. On occasions it arises because of the settings on the A/C units, e.g. flow is too fast or the vanes that could alter the direction of flow is static. Try adjusting the settings - if possible!

Yes its great working in an air con office.......i had one person complaining of the cold.....and put a heater on her feet to keep her feet warm.... AND then complained that it seems even colder!! I got someone from FM with more patience that me to explain.

A problem in the majority of offices with an artificial environment! We learned from experience that what temperature may suit one person certainly doesn’t suit another and in reality it was a vocal minority that kept raising it as an issue. In practice we now utilise as part of our annual DSE assessment process a kind of satisfaction survey and apply the HSE guidelines in that 80% of occupants are seen as a reasonable limit for the minimum number of people who should be thermally comfortable. This has worked for us as a great benchmark over the last twelve months and surprisingly our figures do suggest that 83% of staff are in general content allowing managers to focus on more pressing H&S issues.

It seems this is a normal day in every office with / with out air con..i feel for you.... dammed if you do ..dammed if you dont... but one bodge job we did to eliminate the draughts was to put some card attatched to the roof to prevent the draughts blowing directly onto people...it still blows out but not downwards..not pretty , but effective on the draught issue.. as for temp we started at 18 degree and went up 1 degree daily and waited to see when most complaints stopped ...21 seemed the best for us..once the fuss had died down the moaning and groaning stopped we moved on to more important things..like the world cup lol...good luck

I wouldn't suggest that as long as "it's within the legal limits" your backside is covered! Imagine sitting in an office at 19c and then going outside into 35c. It's a recipe for disaster. Manny

Pato (sorry but I don't know your real name), As I mentioned in my post health probems may occur when differences between temps are more than 6k. You may have a few complaints in the short term but you will have less chance of your personnel being absent due to ill health caused by abrupt change in temperature. My advice is based on current scientific findings which are available on the website of the Federal Agency for Occupational Health and Safety within Germany (www.baua.de). The following publication is possibly the most relevant: http://www.baua.de/cae/s...ationFile/47117/Gd45.pdf Manny

Scotsgirl, I sympathise with you, I have had the same issues since we moved a large number of people into a new, open plan office in 2005. I will state that we do not have "air con", a misnomer which I feel a lot of people use, but ours is an air handling system (apparently known as "comfort cooling) which has the ability to either heat the incoming air (a mix of fresh and re-circ), cool that air permanently, cool it automatically as required by internal temp or just blow it by means of the fans. In all three cases, the fans can be set to high/medium/low. (In a nut shell, true "air con" actually reduces the temperature of the incoming air to well below ambient, then heats it up again to the desired set temp as well adjusting the relative humidity. Very costly and not much favoured these days). The air, warmed, cooled or natural, is supplied through swirl vents which have been indepenantly surveyed for the velocity of delivery, less than 1/2 metre/second at head height well within design specs. "Stale" air is exhausted by means of honeycomb grills in the ceiling. To cut a long story short, despite having had the whole system surveyed and tested, we still have those who feel a "draught" when seated below the swirl vents, some are too hot, some too cold whilst others are perfectly happy. The problem is both seasonal and time-of-day related, hotter in the afternoon is the general census which stands to reason given the amount of heat an individual generates, that heat gradually building up during the morning despite the installed and expensive (and in my honest opinion - a waste of money!) air handling system. There is never going to be an easy solution, other posters have summed up human nature. I wish you luck!