A reader asked a fairly common question the other day. Unfortunately, they did not leave a return email address, so I could not reply back to them. (You gotta leave me a way to contact you when you contact me!!!)

Dear TanningBeds.org,

My question is i am building a room for my tanning bed and my heating cotractor has asked how many btus of heat is produced during one hour af opperation for cooling purposes. Can you tell me?

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Generally speaking, tanning salons will add an average of 1/2+ ton of AC for a small commercial tanning bed that is designed to run all day. For home use, you really shouldn’t need much more AC than you normally need for that size room. The average 24 lamp bed will put out almost 2400 watts of heat. Beds that use electronic ballasts use less, and SunMaster beds use a special electronics system that puts out about 70% less (they use high frequency ballasts). So it depends on your bed.

Other factors that will affect how much AC you need include whether you are in a free standing building (you need more AC) or in the middle of a shopping center (less). If you get a lot of sun from the west, you definately need more AC, since you will be hit hard in the evening during the summer. If you have a lot of glass facing west, again, you will need more AC. Of course, if you live in New York you need less AC than if you live in Georgia.

Several years ago, a salon owner in Virginia called and asked for help because his salon was getting too hot in the summer afternoons, but was ok the rest of the time. He didn’t have enough electrical power to add any additional AC (older building) and wanted to know what he could do to improve the temperature in the salon. He would crank up up the AC first thing in the morning, but it was still too hot by 3am. The solution ended up costing him about $50.

He was in an older commercial building that had the flat roof with black tar. I told him to go paint the roof with some cheap white paint, to better reflect the light and heat during the hot summers. He called back two weeks later and thanked me, telling me that it worked perfectly. Now he just puts up another coat every couple of years, and he has lowered his overall heat, and energy costs. The lesson here is that not every heat issue has to be dealt with by simply adding more AC.

So in the end, calculating AC needs isn’t just about how many BTU’s of energy you use, and several other factors come into play. Again, 1/2 a ton or so is a great place to start calculating from for 24 lamps, but you have to consider location, air flow, insulation and the overall heat load on the building as well.

Dennis