British Columbia’s “DiscoveryGreen” Becomes First Large-Scale North American Building to Use VRF HVAC System

Thursday, February 26th, 2009 | Building Maintenance Industry News, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | No Comments

The DiscoveryGreen Building in Burnaby, British Columbia (artist

The march of technological innovation and evolution in the HVAC market continues, this time in British Columbia, where the “DiscoveryGreen” project, located in the city of Burnaby, is taking a bold step by becoming the first building in North America to use VRF HVAC. This technology has already been widely adopted in Europe and Japan but has remained largely shut out of the North American market.

If you don’t know about VRF, you can begin to get an education by learning that the initials stand for “variable refrigerant flow.” The technology has been the subject of much discussion in the U.S. and the rest of North America on both an informal level, as in the conversation about it at the hvac-talk discussion forum, and a more formal level, as in a concise summary of the technology from the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA): › Continue reading

Tags: Discovery Place, DiscoveryGreen, HVAC market, HVAC systems, HVAC technology, LEED, retrofitting, Vancouver Sun, variable refrigerant flow, VRF HVAC, VRF systems, WAPA, western area power administration

Federal Economic Recovery Plan Focuses on Green Retrofits, Sustainability, Energy Efficiency

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, Green Buildings & Green Technology | No Comments

On February 17 President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. We had previously pointed out that when the plan was still making its way through Congress, the Senate slashed the funds that were to be directed toward retrofitting federal buildings for greater energy efficiency.

When the bill finally emerged from conference committee before heading to the President’s desk, it contained a much more generous outlay for energy efficiency and sustainability issues in general. And that’s the version that is now the new law of the land.

The final shape of the stimulus plan, including its energy efficiency provisions, is of course the “talk of the town.” We think one of the most usefully concise summaries of its energy-related provisions comes from Contractor magazine. Here’s the portion that might be of greatest interest to our readers: › Continue reading

Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Associated General Contractors of America, Contractor magazine, cooling systems, energy efficiency, green projects, green technology, heating systems, renewable energy research, retrofitting

Big Savings from HVAC Upgrades and Retrofits: 3 Case Studies

Monday, February 23rd, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, Green Buildings & Green Technology, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | No Comments

Here’s a look at how HVAC upgrades and improvements are saving money for businesses and institutions all over the world (California, Singapore, and India). This only reinforces one of the general points we keep emphasizing here at our blog: that the state of your HVAC system is central to your bottom line. › Continue reading

Tags: air conditioning systems, cooling towers, energy audits, energy efficiency, energy infrastructure, green buildings, HVAC system, HVAC upgrades, Singapore Post

New England LEED AP Talks About Commercial HVAC Energy Efficiency and Maximizing Building Systems

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, Green Buildings & Green Technology, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, HVAC Regulations and Standards, LEED | No Comments

Bill Badiali, Service Sales Manager and LEED AP from Arden Engineering Constructors

Since 1954, Arden Engineering Constructors has been a leader in New England’s mechanical-electrical contracting industry. Together with their sister company, MJ Daly in Connecticut, they serve blue chip clients in pharmaceutical, healthcare, higher education, commercial, and heavy industrial markets throughout Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

It’s easy to see how they relate to our central focus on commercial HVAC and, more widely, the overarching issues of energy efficiency, green building, and so on, since their in-house services include HVAC, plumbing, process piping, electrical, controls, fire protection, testing and balancing, and mechanical service and maintenance. They also have a professional engineering department and LEED AP’s on staff. In their own words, “We believe this makes us uniquely suited to take total accountability for our projects and to help clients overcome the vast range of challenges that arise during all phases of design, construction and maintenance on a project.” › Continue reading

Tags: AEC, Architecture-Engineering-Construction, Arden Engineering Constructors, Bill Badiali, commercial HVAC, economic crisis, energy efficiency, energy savings, Energy Star, green buildings, green equipment, green retrofits, HVAC installers, HVAC technicians, LEED, LEED 2009, LEED Accredited Professional, LEED AP, MJ Daly, retro-greening

We May Be in the Middle of a History-Making HVAC Revolution

Monday, February 16th, 2009 | Green Buildings & Green Technology, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, LEED | No Comments

Green building expert Jerry Yudelson

We previously quoted renowned green building consultant Jerry Yudelson here at Just Venting in our look at top trends for 2009.

Now Yudelson is worth quoting again for a prediction, or rather a prophecy, that he gave back in January of 2008 in a column at HPAC Engineering titled “The Green-Building Revolution.” In a nutshell, he said we’re presently living through a pivotal and transformational period for building practices in general and HVAC in particular.

We all know that the advent of air-conditioning kicked off a fundamental change in the way we live, do business, and inhabit the planet. Yudelson said the green building revolution is sparking similarly epochal changes:

The green-building movement has become a revolution, representing the biggest opportunity for the HVAC design and construction industry since the advent of widespread air-conditioning technology more than a half century ago.

He wrote those words just over a year ago (fleshing them out in his book The Green Building Revolution) and followed them by pointing to the rapid proliferation of LEED-certified buildings as evidence of this putative shift. And he averred that the whole thing is being driven by the widespread awareness of and response to the issue of climate change that has taken hold of the business world.

The reason this is all worth referring to again here in the early months of 2009 is that the two trends Yudelson identified have only gained additional strength and momentum in the intervening year. If he’s right, as his data points would seem to indicate, then these are momentous times to be involved in HVAC, the building industry, and the business world in general.

Tags: air-conditioning technology, Green Buildings & Green Technology, HPAC Engineering, HVAC construction, HVAC design, LEED certified buildings

HVAC Retrofits Responsible for over 75% of Buildings’ Energy Savings: New Study Shows

Friday, February 13th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | No Comments

A new report on green retrofits from Whitestone Research

A new study from Whitestone Research has demonstrated that when various combinations of energy-saving measures for buildings are tested and compared, modifications to HVAC equipment produce far greater savings than any other factor.

The study “evaluated the life cycle cost effectiveness of alternative combinations of energy-saving components for a laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).”

With our ongoing focus here at Just Venting on all-things-HVAC, the punchline at the end of the report’s executive summary is more than a little ear-catching:

[The study] assessed the cost effectiveness of achieving federally mandated energy savings for an older building. Energy performance and cost data for newer technologies required extensive primary research. While proposed changes affected all building systems, over 75 percent of energy savings came from modifications to HVAC equipment.

The specific HVAC modifications included installation of a heat recovery chiller and a variable volume fancoil system.

The report is dated January 14, 2009 and is available as a two-page PDF. As Whitestone points out, these findings provide lessons for other green projects.

Tags: energy savings, heat recovery chiller, HVAC equipment, HVAC modifications, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The Key to HVAC Chiller Efficiency: Regular and Proper Maintenance

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | No Comments

It can’t be said too often: If you want the chillers in your commercial HVAC system to operate at peak efficiency — and of course you do want that — then nothing is more important than good maintenance.

And what does “good” equal in this scenario? Good means regular, as in keeping to a strict and thorough schedule. And good means proper, as in executing maintenance activities that are careful, comprehensive, and targeted at the right things.

In “Regular Maintenance Keeps Chiller Efficiency High,” The ACHR News offers the following key pieces of advice (and these are boiled down from the complete article): › Continue reading

Tags: chillers, condenser tubes, energy effiency, evaporator tubes, HVAC system, preventive maintenance, refrigerant management

Senate Cuts Stimulus Funds for Energy-Efficient Federal Buildings

Monday, February 9th, 2009 | Building Maintenance Industry News, Green Buildings & Green Technology | No Comments

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen so many people lined up and watching Congressional action as closely as they are right now. This is no surprise, of course, since the economic recovery package that’s presently making its way through Congress is far bigger than any other government spending program in history, which means the pool of potential stakeholders includes, well, everyone.

For those of us who have a personal and/or professional interest in the status of energy efficiency, green buildings, etc., what occurred at the close of last week is particularly noteworthy. On Friday, February 7, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate finally reached a compromise on the recovery package. The net result was to trim $110 billion from the total amount; when the Senate started debating the package was $890 billion, while coming out of the Senate the amount was (depending on which reports you read) about $780 billion. › Continue reading

Tags: congress, Cuts, efficiency, federal buildings, green buildings, green energy, retrofitting, Senate, Stimulus Funds

Green Business in 2009: Companies “Outdid One Another” in Green Building Race Last Year

Friday, February 6th, 2009 | Building Maintenance Industry News, Green Buildings & Green Technology | No Comments

Greener Buildings has released a new report

Greener Buildings has released its second annual State of Green Business report and made it freely downloadable (after a brief registration) as a 62-page PDF.

At the main Green Buildings Website they’re devoting two weeks to highlighting different aspects of the report, and on February 5th the highlighted topic had a direct bearing on commercial HVAC, to wit:

State of Green Business 2009: Building Energy Efficiency Rises Again

The upshot: 2009 begins on the heels of last year’s explosion of greenness, during which the “move to improve the efficiency of existing commercial and industrial buildings revved up” due to “a › Continue reading

Tags: commercial HVAC, facility managers, green buildings, Greener Buildings, report, rising energy prices

Energy Saving Tip #2: Automate Your HVAC System — or Even Your Whole Building

Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | Energy Saving Tips, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, HVAC Regulations and Standards | 2 Comments

In our first energy saving tip, we urged you to look into no-cost or low-cost solutions that will give you immediate payback with minimal capital investment. Now we’re back with a new tip that isn’t cost-free to implement, but that pays for itself many times over with amazing swiftness.

ENERGY SAVING TIP #2:
Install a programmable thermostat to automate your HVAC system, and consider investing in a full building automation system (BAS).

Obviously, a programmable thermostat is going to cost less than a full BAS, so if your budget is limited and you don’t yet have this type of thermostat in place, it’s the avenue you might want to explore. And note that just because it’s less expensive doesn’t mean it won’t reap great rewards! Consider the words of Daniel Sitarz, author of Greening Your Business, as excerpted in a blog post by your friendly neighborhood Eco-Office Gals: › Continue reading

Tags: building automation system, Building Maintenance Industry News, energy efficiency, energy management and control system, Energy Saving Tips, Federal Energy Management Program, HVAC system