I arrived at the 16th National Conference on Building Commissioning late in the evening yesterday and became immersed in passionate discussions about the state of the industry, the benefits of utility incentive programs, the potential for energy savings in the existing buildings stock versus the new construction market, the difficulties created by the pressures of schedule and finance in new construction commissioning, and that was just in the first 30 minutes.

I have been attending the conference since 1997 and always find myself looking forward to the chance to network with my peers, learn from the experience of others, and be involved in some small way in charting the course for the commissioning industry. There have been a lot of good things that have happened at these conferences for me. For one thin...Read More

I don't know how many of you took a look at Michael Ivanovich's Wired on Engineering Education post, but in it, he points you to a blog article on the Wired magazine’s website titled “Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to Be an Engineering Student”.  The article has generated a flurry of responses (the most recent was posted on April 19th, which is the day I am writing this) and as I read through some of them, I had mixed feelings about the article and responses. On the one hand, I was encouraged that folks were dialogging about what they thought the problems were with the learning process;  you can't fix a problem that nobody is acknowledging.  But on the other hand, I was sad because it seemed like so many students found the path to their cho...Read More

When I started my last post on the cooling tower level control issue on a current project, I had planned to use a string of posts to discuss what we learned on the project. But, it turned out that Michael Ivanovich (CSE Editor in Chief) was putting together the April issue, which focused on campus systems, and my pending string of posts looked like a perfect article for the issue to him. So watch for the April issue of CSE if you want to find out more about the cooling tower issues I mentioned or just want to learn more about campuses and engineering on them. Meanwhile, we've run into several other interesting problems on the project that I thought I would share.

The project is approaching substantial completion, so our focus has been to work with the contractors to get systems ...Read More

Field experience can teach us a lot of things that simply can not be learned in the classroom. In fact, some of the most valuable (and sobering) lessons I have learned as a designer have come from working out in the field with the systems I and others have designed. That statement is not intended to discount the value of the classroom experience. The reality is that the two learning environments compliment each other. The field provides endless lessons in applied physics while the class room knowledge provides the tools necessary to understand what you are seeing and the insight required to troubleshoot and optimize operating systems.

Currently, I'm working with a team of folks to bring some new systems on line that are part of a library renovation project on a college campus. One of the first systems we started to work with was the condenser water sys...Read More

In the last post, I said I would share a few more of the things that have helped me feel connected with the earth and environment. What follows is that list. Bear in mind that these things have come out of a growing awareness and taken time to evolve and become a part of my consciousness. But as my awareness has grown, they have become an important part of my focus and desire to be mindful and respectful of the planet as I go about my day to day life. 

Recognize that, In Your Heart, you Probably Already Know

When I took the job with McClure Engineering and told my folks why (i.e. my interview with Bill among other things), my Dad related that he wasn’t exactly surprised. He told me that when I was 8 or 9, we were driving past a strip mine in central Pennsylvania (where I grew up) and I asked him what it was. He explained a...Read More

The first draft of the Green Space column I recently wrote for the January issue of CSE was actually much longer than what was published; like 5 times as long. I have that problem when I write; the first draft is usually way to long and then Michael (Ivanovich, CSE Editor in Chief) and team have to patiently coach me through the process of winnowing out the stuff that is "fluff" around the key points. In this case, some of the "fluff" was maybe a bit more philosophical and "touchy-feely" than was appropriate for the column. But, that doesn't mean its not worth mentioning for folks to consider and Michael has encouraged me to use the blog as a platform for bringing up some of my thoughts for your consideration.

So, here we go. If you continue reading bey...Read More

Several years ago, Tom Stewart and I wrote a paper for ACEEE titled Making Energy Intensive HVAC Processes More Sustainable via Low Temperature Heat Recovery. The paper looks at how heat recovered from low temperature sources, like the condenser water system in a chiller plant, can be used to offset reheat, preheat and even space heating requirements in some applications. Tom is the Director of Facilities for Memorial Hospital of Carbondale.  In many ways, Tom and his facilities group and I kind of "grew up" in building industry together through a relationship that started out as client/consultant and evolved to friendship. (To this day, when I call there, it feels ...Read More

This will be a quick post where I'll link you with some resources that came up during a recent CSE web cast I participated in regarding Green High Tech facilities.  My focus was on commissoining and several folks were  interested in resources regarding the costs and benefits of commissoining and how LEED and green practices impact these costs.  Probably one of the most comprehensive cost benefit resources out there is a meta study that was put together by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs under the leadership of Evan Mills.  The report is loaded with useful information and references numerous resources on the topic.

Ron Wilkinson wrote a good article on establishing commissioning fees that appeared in the ...Read More

In the three posts preceding this one, we have been  exploring the "2/3 rule" for locating the sensors controlling pump and fan speed in variable flow systems.  While we have been exploring this topic in the context of a simple variable flow chilled  water distribution loop, the concepts also apply to variable flow air handling systems.

The bottom line is that the further down the distribution network (towards the load) that we move the sensor controlling a variable speed pump in a variable flow application, the better the optimization of the system will be. If there was only one load in the system, then the ideal location would be at the point where the load connected to the mains. Unfortunately, most of our systems are much, much more complicated than this and con...Read More