Turning up the AC in stores?

[storewanderer]

I went into 99 Cents Only tonight and it was easily 90 degrees inside the store. The cashier had an electronic fan blowing around at the checkstand. Real safe idea during COVID. Will quarantine those items for a week.

[Alpha8472]

I too have experienced a Dollar Tree with no air conditioning. It was so stuffy that I thought I was going to pass out. They had malfunctioning air conditioning and were too cheap to fix it or took their sweet time on purpose. I have been in some rundown 99 Cent Only stores that are uncomfortably warm on a regular basis. The entire store was dirty and unclean, but it really shows how little the company cares when customers are sweltering in the store with lines stretching half way across the store with people packed shoulder to shoulder. If you want to catch coronavirus, go to a dollar store.

In Northern California, we had some terrible wild fires over the past few years that showed which stores had terrible filters on their air conditioning. Some of the old Safeway stores had black soot stains on the ceiling near the air conditioning vents. This proved that the air conditioning was recirculating soot laden air. If the air is not filtered for soot, it is not filtered for virus particles. These places are dangerous as the air is blowing particles back into the air that you have to breath in. I also noticed soot covered air conditioning vents and ceiling panels at Dollar Tree.

The Target in Walnut Creek, California had brand new air conditioning units installed last summer with the new Next Gen remodel. So I feel confident that some of these newly remodeled Target stores have clean air now.

[BillyGr]

I too have experienced a Dollar Tree with no air conditioning. It was so stuffy that I thought I was going to pass out. They had malfunctioning air conditioning and were too cheap to fix it or took their sweet time on purpose. I have been in some rundown 99 Cent Only stores that are uncomfortably warm on a regular basis. The entire store was dirty and unclean, but it really shows how little the company cares when customers are sweltering in the store with lines stretching half way across the store with people packed shoulder to shoulder. If you want to catch coronavirus, go to a dollar store.

Seems to be an issue with Dollar Tree many places, or at least based on postings I've seen. Probably makes some sense that they would want to keep costs lower with their pricing model, but there has to be a point where it becomes an issue.

[ClownLoach]

All new retail grade HVAC units use what are called "economizers" which are designed to reduce energy usage. So if the outside air is 65 or lower then they switch to full outside air intake. When it is warmer there is a mix of recirculation and outside air so the building changes out about every five minutes or less. The problem is that filtration on large commercial HVAC is not as good as what you would want in your home. So even with state of the art high particle filtration problems will occur. A store I oversee got modern state of the art HVAC units installed about three years ago. Problem was there is a creek behind the store, and once the sun sets the creek stinks to high heaven. I'll let you guess how the store would smell at night with the new system... We gave up and moved out.