Retro-commissioning Can Take a Bite Out of Hotel Building System Energy Costs
Green Lodging News, March 5, 2007
Commercial buildings across the US have a common problem: They seldom perform at design level - Optimum level provides the most comfortable and safe indoor environment for the occupants while balancing operation and maintenance costs for the owners. Retro-commissioning (Rcx) is a systematic process that helps solve this problem by allowing a building’s HVAC system and integrated building controls to operate at peak performance. Retro-commissioning building systems can provide significant benefits such as improving occupant comfort, reducing energy cost, improving indoor air quality, enhancing building operations and extending equipment life. The National Environmental Balancing Bureau defines Rcx as “the systematic process by which the building owner ensures that the building and systems are optimized to perform interactively to meet the current operational needs as closely as possible.” more..

NEMA Announces Support of Energy Efficiency Bill in Senate, House
Wichita Falls Times Record News, March 12, 2007
ROSSLYN, VA — The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) today announced its support for the Energy Efficiency Incentives Act of 2007 (S.822), introduced in the Senate by Senators....A companion bill is being introduced in the House..."This bill is an important piece of legislation," said NEMA President Evan Gaddis. "It extends important energy efficiency provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and shows bipartisan support for laws that will save energy, reduce business and consumer costs, and help decrease our dependence on fossil fuels." The bill...extend[s] the energy efficient commercial buildings tax deduction carried in EPAct 2005 to 2012... more..

Contractors not liable for leaky Sayward school
Campbell River Mirror, March 9, 2007
When the new Sayward school was built in 1994, school board officials expected the building to last 50 years. But 10 years later, the elementary school underwent extensive repairs due to water damage that had occurred over a decade. “Unfortunately, water leakage problems developed,” wrote B.C. Supreme Court Justice E. Rice, in a decision posted online last week. “...as a result of water ingress through the building envelope, some of the structural posts and members had become so rotted that they were in danger of collapsing, and it was too dangerous for students or staff to occupy the building.” As a result of the defects, the directors of School Board 72 allowed the Ministry of Finance to pursue a lawsuit against IBI Group Consultants and their contractors who built the school. more..

Architects Go Back to School
Business Week/Architectural Record, February 14, 2007
Rising to the design challenge of creating safe, efficient and inspiring environments for children -- The probability that established design practices will be overhauled is greatest when changes in social, technical, and environmental norms collide at a given point in time. This is such a moment. One catalyst for change is a new concern about the environmental impact of buildings. The need to make our schools sustainable and energy-efficient, and in turn more healthy places to occupy, is undeniable. This requires a rethinking of the design of the school building envelope, which materials are specified for it, and what its mechanical and lighting systems will be. more..

Winners of EQuilibrium competition to develop energy-efficient homes announced
Canadian Architect, February 13, 2007
"EQuilibrium #1" is a single-family, detached house to be located in Hudson, QC. The proposed house will have a very air-tight and well-insulated building envelope. -- Twelve Canadian homebuilder teams have been selected as winners of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CMHC) EQuilibrium sustainable housing competition. The goal of CMHC's EQuilibrium initiative is to demonstrate a new approach to housing in Canada. It will support the building of sustainable, healthy houses that are also affordable and energy- and resource-efficient. EQuilibrium housing is designed to lower homeowners' energy bills by reducing energy consumption and delivering electricity back to the grid. The homes will also promote water conservation, healthy indoor environments, durability, and reduced pollutant emissions. more..

Green plan wins $50K
Edmonton Journal, February 13, 2007
"Duplex meant to generate its own energy gets national recognition -- Plans to build a duplex that will produce at least as much energy as it uses have won an Edmonton group $50,000 to put toward the project’s construction. Solar panels and an extremely energy-efficient design made the Riverdale Net Zero Energy Project one of 12 winners of a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation competition. “The first and best thing to do is always conservation,” said Peter Amerongen, from the Habitat Studio & Workshop, a house design and building company that came up with the project along with Howell-Mayhew Engineering and Solnorth Engineering. “We designed a building envelope that’s very energy-efficient. We did that with thick walls, lots of insulation, high-quality windows and very tight construction.” “Some of the things that we’re doing are very practical and could be implemented today,” he said. “Building a better envelope pays immediately and should be done in every house...” more..

Take the heat off your winter power bills
The City Paper, February 9, 2007
Let the weather — but not your electric bill — shock you. Here are some tips from local experts. The main electricity consumption — about 55 percent — in your home comes from your heating equipment, according to TVA spokesperson John Molton. So, he preaches the “vacuuming the refrigerator with the drapes closed” philosophy to take the heat off winter power bills. “Top things you can do to save are vacuum the coils on your refrigerator, which keeps the condenser running better, and keep drapes closed as an insulator — open, during the day, if they are on the sunny side of the house and closed always at night,” Molton said. Test your family’s personal insulation, he said. more..

Sealing Out Water
ArchitectureWeek, February 7, 2007
Sealants are an important part of the building envelope system. I think of them as the third line of defense against water and vapor intrusion. The first line of defense is made up of the building skin, with its coatings, veneers, and sheathings. Membranes and flashings are secondary. As the third line of defense, sealants are generally used to reduce the sizes of openings exposed to the weather and, particularly, to fill voids between materials that move. They should never be relied on by themselves to stop water intrusion into a wall or roof cavity. (They should not be confused with caulking, which is for thermal or sound isolation between mostly interior surfaces.) Sealants are temporary. If selected and applied properly, a good sealant can last for five to ten years without significant reduction in performance. more..

Green building's surprising energy savings
New York House magazine, January 26, 2007
To maximize the benefit of passive solar heating and cooling, you need to carefully tailor your building envelope to reduce heat loss or heat gain through the walls and roof. -- "Use common sense to make sense." It sounds like Ben Franklin, but the speaker in this case is David Johnston, a green-building consultant in Boulder, Colo. His Ben Franklin-sounding aphorism, he said in a recent interview, has proved to be a useful, shorthand way of explaining sustainable green-building principles and practices. Although these have been embraced by more and more home builders, there is still much confusion among the general public as to what exactly makes a house green. more..

Building Envelope Testing: Move cursor over photo to view thermographic image.

New tax laws provide greater deductions
Daniel Island News, January 18, 2007
....there are tax credits available for many types of home improvements including adding insulation, replacement windows, and certain high-efficiency heating and cooling equipment. The maximum amount of homeowner credit for all improvements combined is $500 during the two-year period of the tax credit. This tax credit applies to improvements made to your primary residence from Jan. 1, 2006 through Dec. 31, 2007. Home builders are eligible for a $2,000 tax credit for a new energy-efficient home that achieves 50 percent energy savings for heating and cooling over the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and supplements. more..

Denver's School for the 21st Century
BusinessWeek, January 17, 2007
At a new public charter school focused on science and technology, the building earns an A -- The school uses about 50 percent of the energy of a similar code-compliant building, according to Kris Leaf, senior project manager for the Weidt Group....A number of strategies helped the building achieve these savings. The building’s east-west orientation minimizes solar gain. Because use of daylight is maximized, little lighting is needed during regular school hours in spaces such as the galleria. Features like a high-performance building envelope and a carbon dioxide monitoring system reduce the need for heating and cooling, explains Leaf.. more..

Rhode Island Government Signs Performance Contract With Siemens
FacilityBlog, January 16, 2007
The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources (RIOER) expects to save state residents the equivalent of more than $11 million in energy and related building operating costs under a 14-year performance contract with Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. "Under our agreement with Siemens we now have a long-term, budget-neutral solution for improving the comfort and energy efficiency of three of our government buildings while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the process," said Andrew Dzykewicz, chief advisor to the Governor on Energy for the state. "We are going forward with similar projects for the rest of the state as well. We urge all municipal governments, as well as institutions and industry to look at this approach for their facilities. more..

Thermal bridges
Weeky1981.spaces.live.com, January 12, 2007
Thermal bridges raise the heating energy consumption, reduce the living comfort, and can in extreme cases bring about damage to the building fabric. - Thermal bridge free construction in passive houses -- Geometrical and structural thermal bridges can have two negative effects on passive houses. On the one hand, they can strongly increase the transmission heat losses of the building envelope, thus jeopardizing the energy target of passive houses. On the other hand, they can, in serious cases, decrease the temperature on individual parts of the building envelope's internal surface to such a degree that air humidity condenses as water vapour and causes moisture damage in these places. When using classical methods, the calculation of transmission heat losses is based merely on the ruled surfaces and ruled structures of the building envelope. more..

Tax Tidbit: Energy-Efficient Building Deduction
Equity Green, January 9, 2007
The IRS has released interim guidance (Notice 2006-52), pending the release of regulations, describing how commercial building owners and leaseholders can qualify for the tax deduction under Code Section 179D by making their buildings energy efficient and established a process for certifying the energy savings required to claim the deduction. The Performance Rating Method (PRM) is required to be used to compute the percentage reductions in total annual energy and power costs. In all cases, the required percentage reductions must be accomplished solely through power and energy cost reductions for the heating and cooling, ventilation, hot water, and interior lighting systems, or in the building envelope. more..

Rules are drawn up to make sure new homes measure up
The Oregonian, January 7, 2007
To Legislature next - Code revisions and more contractor education are meant to eliminate residential building disasters. -- A state panel is recommending wide-ranging reforms to state construction law in the face of a growing number of building failures that cost homeowners and insurers hundreds of million of dollars. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Oregon home buyers have seen their new houses badly damaged by moisture and rot, sometimes within months of completion. The wave of construction problems, chronicled by The Oregonian in June 2005, has struck homeowners all over the country. more..

Sustainable Design Innovations in HOK Designed Project
The A to Z of Building, January 4, 2007
The new City of Santa Clarita Transit Maintenance Facility, designed by HOK, has been certified a LEED® Gold building by the U.S. Green Building Council. Through an unconventional use of materials, the project has become one of the first LEED-certified straw-bale buildings in the world. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings....The integrated design team, consisting of the owner, architect, MEP engineering consultant and landscape architect, determined that straw-bale construction, an uncommon technique generally used in residential development, would best meet the City's needs. more..

A new year - a new sustainability checklist
Elemental/Green Building Press, January 2, 2007
The EA (Environment Agency) have published a guide for developers (pdf, 90 pages): ‘practical advice on making developments better for people and the environment… how you can save time and money by contacting us from the very start of your project.’ The EA guide concentrates on issues outside the building - from the building envelope to the site boundary. It has more than a passing resemblance to BREEAM with issues broken down in very similar categories....I would recommend it to those of us who have come to sustainability via the buildings route rather than an environmental engineering route (seems to be the main two camps I have come across in the land of BREEAM). more..