Noel's Green (make that SUSTAINABLE) Blog

Building Re-commissioning

noel — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:12:52 +0000

A review of

Building Commissioning: A Golden Opportunity for Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Evan Mills, Ph.D.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for: CEC (PIER) July 21, 2009

This white paper contains some compelling arguments in favor of re-commissioning. Money and energy are two items. A building is a kind of organism. We tend to forget that nature and behavior tend to tear and break things down. The passage of time wears things out and we have to maintain our buildings, and just like cars, they need to be tuned up regularly. It’s amazing how much money is being lost by neglecting to do a tuneup. Government and institutional buildings are especially prone to this benign neglect. In government, its often a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Distractions divert us from what is important

noel — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:36:48 +0000

Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says that getting to where we want to be requires focus on the “wildly” important. Covey said that it is all too easy to get off-focus from that. Instead, we get pulled off-course by the myriad of “urgent” demands in our every day lives. Covey notices that people who are successful or happy, do it by staying focussed on the “important.” Most of us get distracted from what is important.

Take this distraction: American politics.

We have this terrible engineering and environmental disaster going on as a result of BP Oil’s sloppiness and lack of foresight. They took chances in the Gulf of Mexico and sadly, lost.

Now theres a clip on the news, of a US representative from Texas, Joe Barton, apologizing to the chairman of BP Oil. Apologizing for President Obama making BP take full responsibility for the blowout and the damages.

Barton is acting the clown in a strange comedy of errors. The government never had much oversight over deep water rigs, and somehow, we never considered what might happen when something like this happened. The risk was ignored and there was a failure to plan or insure against it. It was an error to believe that big corporations are fully capable of regulating themselves, (i.e., covering their asses, AND OURS, at all times).

(The engineers at BP might have raised a flag, but no one paid them any mind.)

Now here comes a clown, apologizing to BP to help them feel better about ruining the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal environment for our children’s children. I am ashamed of so-called leaders like that guy. I am distracted from what is wildly important. The politicians in congress done have a clue as to what is important.

Dependence on oil has a BIG cost

noel — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:28:06 +0000

the common Oil slick

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too big price to pay for our dependency on oil. Now we have to re-evaluate our energy plans. FINALLY. The sustainable approach is to stop drilling and spend more money on energy conserving measures and renewables.
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In this months supplement to Engineered Systems magazine, there was an interesting editorial
The Way I See It: Saving Billions — One Customer At A Time by Randy Rawson, the President of the American Boiler Manufacturers Association. He said:

“The great unfathomable mystery of why commercial, institutional, and industrial upper management remains so averse to saving money and, where appropriate, increasing shareholder value through greater attention to their energy use continues to dog this industry, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

So why is industry dogged by an aversion to saving money? I am sure it is lack of proper education and understanding. Science and math have been battered and beaten down in the US. So many good brains have ended up playing on Wall Street. This is a case of lots of money and potential income streams “hiding in plain sight” due to lack of recognition by those in charge.

Imagine a mile long parade of armored cars, all filled to bursting with 100 dollar bills, passing by a board room during a meeting. The parade stops for a moment, and then returns to the bank. When the executives ask why the money was not delivered, the engineers tell them, “Sorry, you have to TAKE ACTION FIRST (replace the boilers), then you get the money, you monkeys!”

Theodore Roosevelt brought us the Square Deal.

noel — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:41:26 +0000

We need another Square Deal. Its starting to happen, in spite of the terrible division in our government. Obama and the Democratic party are looking strong. Contrast that to the dissolution and confusion on the right wing.

Republicans, look at your current state of affairs and compare that to the great accomplishments and leadership of the GOP in the distant past, before the Bushes, Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower!

Keep in mind, what Teddy said about America:

“A GREAT DEMOCRACY HAS GOT TO BE PROGRESSIVE
OR IT WILL SOON CEASE TO BE GREAT OR A DEMOCRACY.”

Republicans (not you who call yourselves conservative), listen up. He used the word progressive and great in the same sentence. We have to lead, follow or get out of the way. For more information about this great man, read the wiki on him.

______________________________________________________________________________________
And here is something completely different :
The Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide widget to be added on this blog for monthly tracking of CO2

Sweet ending to a beautiful opera

noel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:09:17 +0000

Finale to Les Miserables

President Jefferson said:

noel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:06:49 +0000

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Listen up Newt Gingrich! How radical was that?

A Flow Chart for commissioning

noel — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:57:57 +0000

Alright, I will get off my high horse now and back on my regular horse. Back on the subject of energy and high performance buildings. Recently I have had the good fortune of connecting with some very good people and I am busy again at my profession. I am working with a great commissioning team doing LEED projects. I must say, it is gratifying to be using my experience and brains for a good cause: making a better built environment.

Here is a flow chart that I like. Charts are great for reducing complicated processes down to one glance… I like a good flow chart because they are visual, and I tend to be visual, maybe because of my defective ears.

This chart was borrowed from ASHRAE by the National Institute for Building Sciences (NIBS), and is posted on their Whole Building Design Guide web site. Click on the thumbnail to see the full size version.

America, love it or leave it.

noel — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:34:02 +0000

I love it. I love to vote my conscience.

To be clear on this, I plan to vote against every incumbent, on every side.
I have lost my patience with entrenched power.

I have lost patience with the right wing, those great hypocrites. What the hell are they doing?

I have no respect for the big corporations (meddling) with the news, opinion, and politics.

I have never had respect for those who complain and whine. People like Sarah Palin. Why is she back in the news? (Is she some kind of exotic curiosity of history?)

Like the senator said , “If you have nothing to good to contribute… why don’t you just go home?” ( He was about to go home himself…)

“…we hold these truths to be self-evident, except…”

noel — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:43:03 +0000

It’s become a sad fact that politics in America has become polarized. Moderates and centrists are now squeezed into a hairline dividing the left and right. The media has a part in this, cable television and the Internet especially. Take Fox News, claiming to be “fair and balanced”, and an evident mouthpiece for extreme right wing Republicans. At almost any turn, they bash Democrats, moderates, and the middle.

Judging by FoxNews accounts, George Bush was an excellent president who hardly ever made a mistake. Now 14 months into Barack Obama’s first term, they are telling us that everything wrong with our economy is Obama’s fault. They use Reagan’s famous catch phrase that he is all about “tax and spend”. They never mention that Bush presided over the bailout of AIG, Fannie Mae, Citicorp, et al, using $1 trillion to “borrow and spend”.

FoxNews opposes health care reform effort in knee-jerk fashion. They did the same thing with the job stimulus bill(ARRA), the energy bill, the carbon cap and trade proposal, and almost every other proposal coming from the President. Facts are hard to come by at Fox. Instead of constructive and intelligent criticism, they bitch and whine – and have wasted a whole year doing so. FoxNews supports the Republicans, who are the party of “NO”!

Their polls are slanted (and the numbers are often “out of range” compared to polls by others). They seem to be merely entertaining their right wing viewers. They feature weird celebrities like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin to distract. They hire sensationalists like Glenn Beck

and Geraldo Rivera

to expouse a point of view focused on trivia. They invent fabricated issues like health care “death panels”, what kids wear, religious expression issues, et al, to avoid reporting on the reality.

The most popular pundit at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, continuously scoffs at the idea of global warming. Glenn Beck calls global warming a left-wing plot. Strange. Their ultimate boss, CEO and founder of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, believes that global warming is a serious problem. Murdoch has directed his company to fight global warming by becoming “carbon neutral”. Murdoch’s own employees are undermining his directions!

FoxNews doesn’t discuss the health insurance industry itself. They prefer to broadcast people who bitch and complain about the legislators, including majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, calling them all kinds of names. Medical costs and health care premiums have been skyrocketing for years. Fox News omits this critical fact, except to tell us our taxes will go up if the reforms “take over” the supposedly free insurance market. But this insurance market is hardly free. It is out of control.

Truth: I know someone shopping for individual health insurance at this time. He paid $250 a month at his last employer for his group plan. Now he is looking at costs close to $1200 a month because he needs an individual policy. The insurers tell him that regulations set these insurance rates anyway. So what is Fox News talking about?! We need health care reform to control these costs. FoxNews must be fighting it because they are actually lobbying hard for the insurance companies.

Glenn Beck plays on the fears of the right-wing by repeating the word socialism over and over in reference to health care and energy policy reform by the Democrats. Glenn Beck may tell you that he cares about American families. I highly doubt it. He has an agenda to help the interests of big health care, not to mentions big banks, big insurance, big oil, and so on.

Voters who represent the center, should call out Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News for this mixed-up news and commentary. Maybe this is beginning to happen.

Howell Raines, in this March 14th Washington Post commentary, Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? says that Ailes is “using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history.“

He goes on to say “Fox [is] turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: ‘The American people do not want health-care reform.’… For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party…”

Last, but not least, Raines makes the point that “The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change.”

So, my question is, with truth out the window, “in whose back pocket is the News Corporation?”

Now about that $500 hearing aid tax credit …

How to Sustain the Energy Efficient Design

noel — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:40:35 +0000

I am worried now. A new report just came out showing that 85% of CMMS (Computerized Management and Maintenance System) software being purchased is not being used. This is software that is supposed to be used by facilities managers to streamline their work, but apparently without much eagerness.

An excellent commentary in this months Engineered Systems magazine, entitled Tomorrow’s Environment: A Failure to Plan Is A Plan To Fail by Howard McKew, exposes the weak link in the chain between energy efficient design and the long term operation and maintenance of said design. How do we know they are getting what they paid for?

Too often, we don’t know. McKew explains that measurement and verification is often left out of the design due to budget constraints. I think operations often falls under the radar for lack of understanding the need for verifying. And CMMS software, intended to help rectify this problem by making it easier to manage and maintain the many moving parts of a building, apparently doesn’t get used!

I have mentioned ACCOUNTABILITY in previous posts, and here is another sample of what I am talking about. My worrying is well-founded. Filters need to be changed, pump bearings need lubricating, dampers need to be observed in operation, temperature sensors need to be calibrated and so on. HVAC, even when it is designed to be as simple as possible, is still complicated in practice.