Journal of Indoor Environmental Quality

A History of School Design: A new publication includes a historical look at radiant heating.

National Institute of Building Sciences: The Institute’s National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities has published a new study that looks back at the designs of school buildings of the recent past, identifying trends in energy consumption, ventilation, heating, air quality, lighting and acoustics. The study, A History of School Design and its Indoor Environmental Standards, 1900 to Today was written by Lindsay Baker, a doctoral candidate in the Building Sciences program of the Architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley

For more information on the National Institute of Building Sciences visit: nibs@nibs.org

RBc: Make note of the indoor environmental information from 1949 illustrated between pages 13 and 16...and keep in mind this is over 60 years ago but the principles still apply today.

TED Talks, James Howard Kunstler: Fired up about civilization and architecture in America.

You’re gonna love this or be offended but if you can set aside your sense of pureness you can hear a guy whose fired up about civilization, culture and architecture in America...if you offend easily this is not for you but if you want to hear one man passionate description of where we've been and where we need to go this will keep you laughing and nodding.

If you press the play button - don't say I didn't warn you...

     

A Ph.D. Thesis on human comfort: New materials worthy of study

As readers of this Journal know, I read a lot of paper’s and by far the best ones are though such outlets as the University of California eScholarship which, “provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools” to readers like me.

Well in my mining of papers for the upcoming ASHRAE San Antonio meetings I came across Monika Frontczak’s Thesis, “Human comfort and self-estimated performance in relation to indoor environmental parameters and building features” which gets high praise from us for her outstanding hard work on what is an excellent paper in human comfort. In particular is the research on words occupants choose to define comfort and what elements are considered more influential – all very good stuff!

Below is the abstract from the paper  - there is nothing more to be said other than read the paper – you’ll be much more wiser for it.

The main objective of the Ph.D. study was to examine occupants’ perception of comfort in nonindustrial buildings (homes and offices), in particular how building occupants understand comfort and which parameters, not necessarily related to indoor environments, influence the perception of comfort.

To meet the objective, the following actions were taken: (1) a literature survey exploring which indoor environmental parameters (thermal, acoustic, visual environment and air quality)predominantly determine overall comfort and whether other factors unrelated to the indoor environment influence the perception of comfort; the literature survey summarized 42 peer reviewed and conference articles and 1 book covering the period from 1970 to 2009;(2) preparation, distribution and analysis of a questionnaire survey sent to 2499 addresses representing the most common types of residential buildings in Denmark and filled out by 645persons (response rate of 26%); and (3) analysis of the post-occupancy satisfaction survey conducted by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California Berkeley in 351 mainly U.S. office buildings and filled out by 52,980 building occupants.

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Final comment:  Kudo’s to CBE and DTU for making this and other papers available on an open access basis – wish more academic institutes would follow your path.

Suggested reading:

Indoor Environmental Ergonomics: A description

IEQ Parameters

 

Georgia Health Sciences University: College of Dental Medicine - family-centric care environment

AUGUSTA, Ga., April 12, 2012 – The State of Georgia’s only dental school – the Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU) College of Dental Medicine (CDM) – has a new $112 million home that features a warm, embracing, family-centric care environment, provides state-of-the-art equipment for both students and dental practices, and fulfills a need for the university to educate more dentists.

 Designed by architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent (LAS) in collaboration with Francis Cauffman as consulting dental architect, the five-story, 269,000-square-foot building features a host of sustainable design elements and is targeting LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

 The natural light-filled building, whose dominant exterior design element is a gentle curve that spans the length of building’s 1.68-acre footprint, was developed in response to patient and student input that called for an environment that was anything but institutional.

“I think we are one of the first, if not the first dental school in the world to solicit building design input from a Patient and Family Centered Care committee,” said Connie Drisko, CDM dean at GHSU (formerly the Medical College of Georgia). “The committee members told us that they wanted a patient-friendly building. And moving to this building from a box-like structure with not a lot of windows, I personally told the architects, ‘Don’t give me a box.’

“Lord, Aeck & Sargent translated into reality a building that fits our vision and needs. It’s a building that has a really spectacular outer appearance, an interior that flows, and LEED features to help lower our maintenance costs,” Drisko added.

photo credit: © Jonathan Hillyer / Atlanta.

For further details contact: Annie Kohut | Kohut Communications Consulting (tel) 770-913-9747 | (cell) 404-786-6062 (fax) 770-913-3197 | annielk@bellsouth.net www.kohutcommunications.com | Follow me at http://twitter.com/kohutcomm

Lord, Aeck & Sargent is an award-winning architectural firm serving clients in scientific, academic, historic preservation, arts and cultural, and multi-family housing and mixed-use markets. 

RBc: We like many aspects of this building including the family-centric approach and low maintainence features...worth visiting the links to learn more.

 

Effect of a Radiant Panel Cooling System on Indoor Air Quality of a Conditioned Space

Excerpt: From the study of the radiant panel system according to Khartoum climatic conditions, the following conclusions can be drawn:

• The present investigation indicated that the radiant cooling system improves the human comfort (100% fresh air is used).

• The results obtained in this study demonstrate that the ceiling radiant cooling panel system creates uniform temperature distribution inside the conditioned space. Moreover, the predicted inside walls surface temperatures and temperatures of perpendicular walls of inside air are shown to be in reasonable agreement with those measured as indicated in the experimental results.

• The current study showed that the ceiling radiant cooling panel system improves indoor air quality (low noise and minimum supply air are used when compared with conventional cooling system)

• Electrical services reduction for the mechanical equipment can be achieved due to smaller chiller, fans and pumps.

Citation: Mohamed, E.T., Abdalla, K.N., Effect of a Radiant Panel Cooling System on Indoor Air Quality of a Conditioned Space, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference Enhanced Building Operations, Kuwait, October, 2010

Source: <http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/94143/ESL-IC-10-10-91.pdf?sequence=1>

RBc: For further studies on this topic see - ASHRAE San Antonio to deliver an outstanding radiant cooling and heating program

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Announcement: New course dates and locations

Sept. 17-19 Edmonton, AB
Oct. 29-31 Halifax, NS
Nov. 19-21 Vancouver, BC
Nov. 26-28 Toronto, ON
Dec. 3-5 Montreal, QC

Topic:  

How to establish low energy allowances for delivering thermal comfort and indoor air quality in modern buildings

Description:

This three day hybrid course explores the design principles in energy and exergy efficient indoor environmental quality focusing on integrating architectural, interior design and radiant based HVAC system solutions. The core content based on theory and practical applications will revolve around the health, building and HVAC sciences including a study in thermal comfort and indoor air quality, cold climate enclosures, heat transfer, hydronic cooling and heating systems including a detailed study in fluid fundamentals and the hydraulics of hydronics, control valves and balancing, heat terminal units including fan coils, radiant cooling and heating and dedicated outdoor air systems.

Audience:

This course is for today’s working design practitioner who may be a recent graduate from an architectural, mechanical engineering or interior design program and those from the distribution and contracting professions who already hold design certifications from various institutes and associations.

Experienced professionals who may want to expand their knowledge base on IEQ, controls, radiant heating & cooling, fluid hydraulics and snow melting will also benefit from the program.

Note:

Course fee includes 21 hours of instruction, 500 page bound course curriculum with all the slides, formatted 4 per page on 11x17 landscape, industry software and handbooks

Details:

Course overview and instructor bio

Course hosted by:

Uponor Academy

Software Review: iDrawnics a 3D digital fabrication tool

 

I took my first digital drafting class in 1985 and since that time have used AutoCAD exclusively with the Visio for generating architectural and mechanical images in 2D and 3D. AutoCAD in particular has a steep learning curve compared to other drafting tools and one of the newer and easiest ones for hydronic designers is now available from Larry Drake of Teal International.

Drake, a long time industry colleague is no stranger to drafting and design and has utilized Google SketchUp to build a comprehensive library of 3D life like and to scale hydronic components that takes the arduous task of parts drafting out of the equation…it really does free up time to quickly and easily build a mechanical room pre installation.

Visit: iDrawnics

Book review - High Performance Enclosures: A Design Guide for Institutional, Commercial and Industrial Buildings in Cold Climates by Prof. J Straube, Ph.D., P.Eng.

So what do you think? Kind of appropriate after featuring the thermal bridging exposure from the Aqua Tower that Dr. John Straube’s new manual, “High Performance Enclosures” shows up in our mail box!

So I haven’t had a chance to jump fully into this new publication from Building Science Press but what I have seen is excellent. Straube provides with clarity both the graphics and text to explain in detail numerous enclosures from both the low rise and high rise camps. I particularly like the work he’s done on building form and orientation plus the discussions on building loading. As expected there is some duplication for clarification of principles from Straube and Burnett’s 2005, “Building Science for Building Enclosures” which was a modernization and expansion of Hutcheon and Handegord 1983 classic, “Building Science for a Cold Climates”; but unlike the latter references which were targeted more to the engineering sciences, the new publication is more for the practicing engineering, technician, architect and builder -  having less theory and more practical example of the what and how to do’s. For a good one-two punch at building science and enclosures you won’t find a better pair of manuals than the 2005 and 2012 publications to keep you company during those cold winter design days.

To order visit,  http://www.buildingsciencepress.com/Building-Science-for-Building-Enclosures-P6.aspx

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A note at all publishers…we get the reasoning behind the paper bound publications but really - it’s getting old…we would happily pay a small premium for secured .pdf versions rather than fund the world of transportation, duty and brokerage which adds zero value to the materials. Look at it this way...if we spent less money on zero education value items we could spend more money on the valuable educational items. Those are my thoughts and I'm sticking to them...

Suggested reading:

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) of Building Materials

Building Enclosures: A Filter, Sponge and Capacitor

What happens when artistic expression and culture trump common sense and principles in sustainability?

Thermal Bridging: A Thermographic Perspective of Epic Scale

What you are looking at through the eyes of thermography is the 86 story Aqua Tower in downtown Chicago. Now, admittedly I find it hard to pass judgement on the architectural skills necessary to build a high rise of this magnitude...its impressive to say you built a high rise - it would look good on a resume. It's also a cool looking building…perhaps the design is not for everyone but it does has a certain je ne sais quoi factor going for it. However, I was in Chicago on several occasions to see this building going up and I and anyone else with an eye for building science could see this structure was going to break all the laws of thermal sensibility as it relates to thermal bridging.

What is thermal bridging? Thermal bridging is what happens when you sit down on a cold park bench and freeze your rear off – literally the process of sitting destroys the heated air barrier between your skin and pants; and the bones in your butt compress the fabric reducing the effective insulation between your cheeks and the seat. The result is a cold rump.

Well in the case of the Aqua Tower, if you extend the interior floor of a building out to the exterior exposing it to the outer elements of heat, wind and moisture it’s like installing a walking conveyor belt (like the type you see in airports) for moving heat and moisture in and out of the building.

The thermographic image shows the various stories’ going up to the top and the colors represent the various temperatures with the hottest temperatures represented by the warmer tones and the colder by the cooler tones.

I’m sure the mechanical and structural engineers had major debates with the architect and clients on this building and evidently they lost out.

So what happens when science loses to artistic expression and culture? Well you get all glass buildings with cooling fins.

This is the type of situation where “feebates” make sense – that being a fee paid by those who want build bad buildings to  those who are willing to build good buildings.

Photo(s) source: Wikipedia, (Thanks to A. Tennyson for making us aware of this image.)

More on thermal bridging and its effect on mean radiant temperature - a key component of thermal comfort. 

JIGSAW Homes: JIGSAW BLUE - Building the building blocks

I love it when a builder calls me up out of blue (pun intended) to bring me into their world of innovation. Last week I invested a few hours on site with JIGSAW BLUE's Scott Wilson an industrial designer by profession who is leading a high performance building charge along with partners Cory Krygier a professional architect and Wade Butler finishing carpenter turned green construction professional.

JIGSAW BLUE is the R & D arm of JIGSAW Homes and was created, “Because we believe that there is a better way to be building homes, that homes can be places which contribute to a sustainable built environment and improve the health and well-being of the occupants at the same time.”

These guys get things like mean radiant temperature - It’s rare to find a builder that really gets the importance of the occupants well-being in a space but when you put an industrial designer together with an architect and a carpenter you have the recipe for a home building team that gets back to the basics of shelter – keep it simple, affordable to purchase and operate and enhance the indoor environment so that it enables healthy living. These guys go beyond the norm and are writing their own rules – they don’t dabble in high performance like most builders they do high performance every day of the week.

One of their “in your face statements” amongst the status quo of competing builders was this nutritional label – it was a line in the sand that got the public’s attention which got people talking about the things we’ve all been talking about…it was a great way to introduce the world of high performance housing into the world of the everyday Jill and Jack home buyer.

I like this kind of stuff – its bold, disruptive and creates change in a complacent world established by the status quo.

Way to go guys!

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Some standard features of the JigSaw Blue Home

High performance floors, walls and roof and high performance windows including methods to reduce air leakage to well below industry norms. These features reduce heating and cooling costs whilst improving thermal comfort.

Solar for power generation and heating – in conjunction with the high performance enclosure, significantly lowers energy costs while reducing or eliminates reliance on utility based energy providers.

Low VOC interior finishes and air to air heat exchangers – enables healthier indoor air whilst reducing costs associated with ventilation system in comparison to other systems.

Well placed and properly proportioned windows – enables natural lighting without destroying building performance and inducing discomfort due to excessive solar gains and cold surfaces.

Low maintenance materials – enables less "hands on time" for owners.

I would suggest anyone interested in these guys products to contact them through their websites or by visiting their projects...they make it so easy you'll be glad you did.

JIGSAW BLUE and JIGSAW Homes

New Apartment Homes Prove Public Housing Can Be Sustainably Designed

ROME, Ga., April 26, 2012 – As the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established public housing programs for low-income families, the elderly, and persons with disabilities, public housing by definition must be affordable for its residents. But not all public housing is also sustainably designed.

Village Green, a new, energy-efficient,10-unit public housing project for the Northwest Georgia Housing Authority (NWGHA), will save its residents money and is expected to achieve Enterprise Green Community Certification, Energy Star certification and LEED for Homes Silver certification. It will also be the first public housing authority project in Georgia to become LEED certified.

“It’s important to understand that sustainable design is achievable without having to add significant cost and complexity to a project,” said Jay Silverman, project manager at Lord, Aeck & Sargent, which designed the multifamily building. “For us, however, it wasn’t about meeting LEED or other performance standards; it was about incorporating sustainability as a way to improve the quality and livability of the apartment homes and to lower operating costs for the residents and client while staying within our budget. By saving on operating costs, the Housing Authority can use its annual budget to provide better resources and programs.”

photo credit: © Sarah Dorio

For further details contact: Annie Kohut | Kohut Communications Consulting (tel) 770-913-9747 | (cell) 404-786-6062 (fax) 770-913-3197 | annielk@bellsouth.net www.kohutcommunications.com | Follow me athttp://twitter.com/kohutcomm

Lord, Aeck & Sargent is an award-winning architectural firm serving clients in scientific, academic, historic preservation, arts and cultural, and multi-family housing and mixed-use markets. 

Assessment of Indoor Air Pollution in Homes with Infants

 Abstract: Infants spend most of their indoor time at home; however, residential air quality is poorly understood. We investigated the air quality of infants’ homes in the New England area of the U.S. Participants (N = 53) were parents of infants (0–6 months) who completed telephone surveys to identify potential pollutant sources in their residence. Carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤0.5 µm (PM0.5), and total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) were measured in 10 homes over 4–7 days, and levels were compared with health-based guidelines. Pollutant levels varied substantially across homes and within homes with overall levels for some homes up to 20 times higher than for other homes. Average levels were 0.85 ppm, 663.2 ppm, 18.7 µg/m3, and 1626 µg/m3 for CO, CO2, PM0.5, and TVOCs, respectively. CO2, TVOCs, and PM0.5 levels exceeded health-based indoor air quality guidelines. Survey results suggest that nursery renovations and related potential pollutant sources may be associated with differences in urbanicity, income, and presence of older children with respiratory ailments, which could potentially confound health studies. While there are no standards for indoor residential air quality, our findings suggest that additional research is needed to assess indoor pollution exposure for infants, which may be a vulnerable population.

Citation: Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011 December; 8(12): 4502–4520.Published online 2011 December 5. doi:  10.3390/ijerph8124502 

Source:<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290986/?tool=pmcentrez>

Additional literature

IAQ Study reports PM2.5, acrolein, and formaldehyde dominate health impacts

Excerpt:  “Our analysis demonstrates that in most U.S. residences PM_2.5, acrolein, and formaldehyde dominate health impacts due to chronic exposures to nonbiological air pollutants. The DALY losses from these three pollutants appear to be much larger than the DALY losses due to CO deaths from acute poisoning in homes.

SHS and radon are also significant contributors to populationwide DALY losses, but these exposures occur in a smaller fraction of homes. Formaldehyde is primarily emitted from materials throughout the home. Similarly, acrolein is also emitted from such materials; however, cooking is also a potentially significant indoor source (Seaman et al. 2007). PM_2.5 concentrations indoors, unlike acrolein and formaldehyde, are due to both indoor and outdoor sources, and outdoor concentrations may exceed indoor levels in many locations (Weisel et al. 2005).”

PM: Particulate matter
DALY: disability-adjusted life-years 
SHS: secondhand smoke 

Source: Logue JM, Price PN, Sherman MH, Singer BC, A method to estimate the chronic health impact of air pollutants in U.S.. Residences, Environ Health Perspect. 2012 Feb;120(2):216-22. Epub 2011 Nov 17. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279453/ >

Related resources on indoor air quality.

Georgia Department of Natural Resources completes historic preservation project.

One doesn’t often hear about sustainable design projects that are also historic preservation projects. But despite some preservationists who don’t believe that historic restoration can be accomplished sustainably, the restoration of a 19^th century Italianate farmhouse demonstrates that historic restoration and green building principles do in fact complement one another. The house, once home to a former Georgia governor, was built around 1870 in the North Georgia mountains and is now owned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The DNR challenged the design/build team to complete a historic restoration project that would incorporate principles of sustainability and retain as much of the existing farmhouse structure as possible; the result – a project that has earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent utilized a computational fluid dynamics (CFD), energy modeling and life cycle costing to incorporate sustainability principles into the project. And, in keeping with the history of early adoption of technologies such as indoor plumbing and electricity by earlier owners, the team selected an area near the farmhouse to install a 3.2 kilowatt grid-tied system that will generate power to offset much of the electricity used by the house.

Photo credit © Jonathan Hillyer/Atlanta. If you’d like to view and download additional photos, you can find them at http://bit.ly/ubIdAL.

For further details contact: Annie Kohut | Kohut Communications Consulting (tel) 770-913-9747 | (cell) 404-786-6062 (fax) 770-913-3197 | annielk@bellsouth.net www.kohutcommunications.com | Follow me at http://twitter.com/kohutcomm

Lord, Aeck & Sargent is an award-winning architectural firm serving clients in scientific, academic, historic preservation, arts and cultural, and multi-family housing and mixed-use markets. The firm’s core values are responsive design, technological expertise and exceptional service. In 2003, The Construction Specifications Institute awarded Lord, Aeck & Sargent its Environmental Sensitivity Award for showing exceptional devotion to the use of sustainable and environmentally friendly materials, and for striving to create functional, sensitive and healthy buildings for clients. In 2007, Lord, Aeck & Sargent was one of the first architecture firms to adopt The 2030 Challenge, an initiative whose ultimate goal is the design of carbon-neutral buildings, or buildings that use no fossil-fuel greenhouse gas-emitting energy to operate, by the year 2030. Lord, Aeck & Sargent has offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For more information, visit the firm at www.lordaecksargent.com

 

EPA Releases Formerly Confidential Chemical Information

November 28, 2011 -- EPA reported its progress reviewing and declassifying the identities of chemicals claimed as confidential under TSCA. This two-year effort is part of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson's commitment to increase public access to chemical information. The declassified and newly available information can be found under a new "declassified tab" using the Chemical Data Access Tool.

RBc: More progress in the transparency of potential chemical exposures.

 

New Appliance Integrates Multiple Renewable Energy Sources

We don’t usually cover specific products here but industrial design and product ergonomics is on our radar screen and this new item has caught our attention.

I’ve had some time to look at the SDPM appliance for integrating and controlling multiple energy sources for hybrid HVAC systems.

Here's the thing, for a long time I’ve been a big fan of the appliance principle and specifically for systems which incorporate hydronics as the integrating medium.

The SDPM line developed by Bill Shady, P.E., and his team enables the merging of renewable and non renewable systems into a form that facilitates function by overcoming the complex challenges of custom on site fabricated systems. 

 With this product line, Bill has applied his engineering skills with his passion for conservation in demonstrating that even the most complex energy management system can be standardized by simple recognized shapes.

Short strokes: it looks like an appliance, has the same parts as an appliance and its very coolness is elevated by how effectively it conserves time and energy in the world of engineering, contracting and sustainability.

For more information contact:

William Shady, P.E.
Sustainable Design and Product Management
122 Fairmount Ave
Santa Cruz, CA 95062
831-459-7300 office
831-234-5151 mobile
bill@sustainabledesignpm.com
www.sustainabledesignpm.com

Read more about our thoughts on this concept of Designing For People, Familiarity, and Simplicity read: Tower of Babble - Confused over comfort