Holiday Schedules

Our illustrious marketing manager Simon suggested that with the holidays approaching, it might be a good idea to talk about how to shut down a building on a holiday. What a great idea!

When there is a Holiday, buildings usually don’t start the Central Plant or any of the AHUs. Of course, it would be a waste of money, but sometimes you might have a tenant that needs to run their air conditioning anyway because of the type of business. It could be a private club on the top floor overlooking the beautiful downtown or it could be a retail space or a restaurant on the first floor. The need for some schedules to run on a Holiday is why there is an 8^th day on the schedule editor. I will cover that later in this article.

In case you didn’t know, in CBAS there is a feature called Holiday Schedule that makes holidays easy. When you schedule a holiday, it downloads to all points in the database that have a Schedule. That Schedule and any changes download to the controllers if the Schedule points are on Computrols controllers. The Priority of the Holiday Schedule overrides the Priority of Weekly Schedule.

Of course, BACnet, Modbus or other 3^rd party protocol points do not download to the controllers of 3^rd party manufacturers. However, if the channels that those controllers are on are “on controller” channels, then the points do download to the Host controllers for those channels. But all other schedules will stay on the CBAS Automation Server or DPU. As long as the CBAS DPU is running 24/7 it shouldn’t matter if some schedules are not downloaded to the controller.

When you create a new Holiday in CBAS and you leave the Holiday Editor, you might see that downloads to controllers are happening. You might see a green download banner at the top of the screen or you might see that points are showing download status. If a controller has lost communication, then the new Holiday Schedules will not make it to the controller. When you get that controller back online, you need to go into the Holiday Editor and make a change, like adding or deleting a Holiday, and it will download again. 

First, here is how to get to the Schedule Editor then the Holiday Editor. Click any point that has a Schedule and go to Program. 

Click the Schedule button and you will see something like this:

There are step-by-step instructions in the CBAS Manual on how to program a Schedule, beginning on page 76. But here I would like to mention how to easily program a Schedule using the Graphical Editor. Click the Use Graphical Editor button and you will see this:

In order to create the 7AM to 6PM M-F schedule, just click in the square for Monday 7AM and drag down to the right to create a box that covers those times, then release the click.

Click Start and the box will turn blue. Another click and drag is required to do the Saturday schedule and the Holiday schedule if the AHU needs to be ON during those days.

Right-click to leave that screen and you will see the Schedule in text like in the first picture.

Notice in the first picture that the 8^th line is the Holiday Schedule and it begins with Holiday Stop at midnight and ends with Holiday Auto at 23:59. Since the Holiday Schedule is a higher Priority, it must be “Autoed” for the lower priority Weekly Schedule to take over. The schedule in the picture is what you are normally going to have on a Holiday Schedule, but if you need something to run on a Holiday, then you need to put in a schedule.

The easiest way to set the schedule is to click the Graphical Editor button and drag a box on the line labeled HOL. Exit the editor and you will see something like this:

Notice that it starts with Holiday Off at midnight. Then the regular schedule starts and stops at the correct times.

In the 4^th cycle, it Autos by Holiday Priority just before midnight. Remember, this is necessary for the Weekly Schedule to take over.

Once you have one point set up with the correct times to run on the Holiday, you can use the Copy Schedule to Another Point button and choose other points that will have the same Weekly and Holiday Schedule.

Now let’s see how to set up a day on the calendar to be a Holiday. From the Schedule screen, click the Edit Holidays button.

Notice that the Holidays are arranged in chronological order. To edit an existing Holiday, click Edit then click the Holiday and make your changes.

To delete a Holiday, click Delete then the Holiday. It is recommended that when you add the Holidays for the year, you delete the ones that have already passed. There is limited room allocated in the controllers for Holidays, so they need to be deleted regularly.

To create new Holidays, click the Create button.

Type in the name of the Holiday. When you click the Date, it will bring up a calendar that allows you to go from this month to the next month and click a day.

Right-click to complete the Holiday and then you will see it on the list.

Right-click or Escape to exit the Holiday Editor and the changes will download to the controllers that have Schedules.

If you view any other schedule in the database, you will see the same Holidays on the list. Make sure that those points have the correct Schedule on the Holiday line depending on whether the equipment needs to run or not. Like I said earlier, you can copy schedules to another point.

We at Computrols hope that you and your families enjoy the upcoming Holiday Season!