Bank of America
Cutting the Cooling Load on a Downtown Modesto Office Tower
A multi-storey building with glass on every elevation, and an air conditioning bill to match. The brief was to kill the heat without losing the light.
Downtown Modesto, CA
- Film
- 30% solar control
- Building
- Multi-storey office
- Goal
- Heat & energy cost
- Daylight
- Kept
The challenge
A large building with glass on every face is a greenhouse in a Central Valley summer. Sun lands on floor after floor of open-plan office, the surfaces re-radiate it, and the HVAC runs hard all afternoon trying to remove heat the windows keep letting back in. On a footprint this size that is a serious operating cost, not a comfort complaint.
What we did
We specified a 30% solar control film across the elevations taking the worst of the sun. Thirty percent is a deliberate middle ground: dark enough to reject a meaningful share of solar energy, light enough that the floors keep their natural daylight and their view over downtown. Going darker would have saved marginally more heat and cost them the thing people like about a glass building. The film was paired with interior screens for glare control at desk level.
The result
The building holds temperature far more evenly through the afternoon, which takes sustained load off the air conditioning — the single biggest line item a glass building of this size runs in July. Staff keep the daylight and the view, and the exterior reads as one consistent glazed facade rather than a patchwork of blinds.
