The Thermostat Does What You Asked
Expectation. The resident shall have agency over the environmental conditions within their own living space — and when the building limits that agency, the limitation is transparent and the reason is communicated.
Required.
- Where the building provides resident-facing environmental controls — thermostat, ventilation, lighting, window shading — those controls respond to the resident's input. A control that does not respond, or that responds and then silently reverts, has failed.
- When the building limits or overrides a resident's environmental control for operational reasons — energy management, system protection, load balancing — the resident can make adjustments within the constrained range independently. A limitation that removes all resident agency without offering any adjustment is disclosed as such.
- The resident can report an environmental condition in their unit or a common area — temperature, air quality, noise, water pressure, lighting — through the building's support system. The report is subject to the same acknowledgment and resolution requirements as any support request.
Recommended.
- Where the building monitors environmental conditions in common areas or units — temperature, humidity, air quality — the resident can view current conditions through the interface.
- When a resident adjusts an environmental control that affects shared infrastructure — for example, a thermostat setting that interacts with a central climate system — the building communicates any constraints on the available range before the resident makes the adjustment, not after.
- The resident can view a record of infrastructure outages and planned disruptions — date, system affected, duration, resolution — for the current occupancy or 12 months, whichever is longer.
In practice.
A resident sets their thermostat to 21°C. The system responds: the temperature adjusts toward 21°C. The control did what the resident asked. They did not set 21°C, leave the room, and return to find it at 24°C with no explanation.
During a peak demand event, the building limits cooling output to units on the south-facing facade. A notification appears: cooling temporarily limited to minimum 23°C for the next 3 hours due to grid demand, your current setting has been adjusted from 21°C to 23°C, setting will restore automatically at 6 PM. The resident understands the constraint, knows it is temporary, and knows when it ends.
A resident notices a persistent chemical odor in the hallway outside their unit. They report it through the building's support system, categorized as an environmental concern. The report is acknowledged, assigned, and investigated. The resident can track the status. They did not report it by mentioning it to the doorman, who forgot to log it.
Failure modes.
Ghost thermostat. The resident sets the thermostat to 21°C. It displays 21°C. The room is 24°C. The building's central system has capped unit cooling at 24°C for energy management. The thermostat shows the resident's preference, not the building's reality. The control accepted the input but did not deliver the outcome — and did not disclose the limitation.
Unreported condition. The ventilation in the parking garage has been underperforming for a week. CO levels are elevated but below emergency thresholds. The BMS logs the data. No one reviews it. Residents report headaches in the ground-floor lobby. The building has the data that would explain the symptoms but has not acted on it or communicated it.
Acknowledged but abandoned. A resident reports excessive noise from the HVAC plant room adjacent to their bedroom. The support system acknowledges the report. No one investigates. Three months later, the resident has purchased earplugs. The report sits in "acknowledged" status. The environmental complaint entered the support system but never progressed.
Test.
- Set a resident-facing environmental control. Confirm: the system responds to the input and delivers the requested condition, or communicates why it cannot.
- Initiate a building override of a resident's environmental setting. Confirm: the resident is notified with reason, duration, and available adjustment range.
- Report an environmental condition through the support system. Confirm: the report is acknowledged, categorized, and trackable by the resident.