Hi there Hive Mind! Hope everyone's doing well and staying cool in the heatwave all over.

An engineer on one of my projects reached out about contact switches for operable windows that are empowered to shut down the associated FCU in dormitory bedrooms when the window is open. This functionality allows the FCU to run at something like... Read more

Hey there, Tally users.  I'm looking for some answers to a few basic questions about using Tally:

ASHRAE posted this year's list of honors and right there at the top of the list is our SMEPL colleague, Cindy Cogil - now able to add FASHRAE to her signature block!  Well done, Cindy and congratulations to ASHRAE for recognizing your accomplishments.

Dear fellow SCL'ers,

Recently one of our members, Ryan Poole, sustainability leader at DPR, has been facing some personal challenges. His wife is 35 weeks pregnant and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They have moved across country - from Colorado to South Carolina - to be closer to thier parents and their support system, but they can... Read more

We apologize, but the heating fuel cost calculator is no longer on the BuildingGreen website.

Take a look at Efficiency Maine's heating fuel cost calculator instead.

Preservative treatments extend the service life of wood, but many such treatments are highly toxic, especially to aquatic life.

BuildingGreen-Approved Preserved Wood

Products approved by BuildingGreen use chemicals (commonly borates) that are relatively low in toxicity and have low VOC emissions.

Health and Environmental... Read more

I'm going way outside of my skillset and comfort zone...venturing into HR territory to do an analysis of my company's benefits package to see if it meets exceeds or falls short of the requirements of Fitwel and WELL. Has anyone else done this within their organization? How was this received by your company's executive team?

When... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of LEED 2012 Second Public Comment Period Opens.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1. Recognize the emphasis on making language more cleanly worded (while maintaining overall intent and requirements) and the focus on dividing sections by topic... Read more

Hello Green Gurus,

We are excited to announce that BuildingGreen is planning a series of in-depth virtual facilitation workshops for this fall. We are collaborating with Julie Huffaker from Deeper Funner Change (who you may remember from the 2020 Winter SDL Summit, or her introductions to virtual facilitation back in April). She will... Read more

Is there a way for southface staff or guest experts to "pin" or "tag" the "right" answer in a forum question? It might be useful to designate the right answer and pin it to the top of a forum thread. I don't want the answer selected via crowd source but by staff or volunteers. Thanks.

We have a client for whom we are designing a very high performance manufacturing facility, and they want to communicate their building's performance both dynamically and in real-time within their lobby for guests and staff.

We would like to mine the wisdom of this group to see what recommendations we can muster regarding high quality... Read more

The deadline for submitting presentations is coming up. This year ASHRAE is hosting a joint conference with Simbuild. We are just about to send out an extension announcement (It is now Feb 9th) , so there is still time to get an abstract for a presentation. 

Possible ideas for topics: 

Daylight - new metrics and... Read more

In this live webinar on the sustainability of wood construction, we tap the expertise of leaders in the field and look into three main issues:

Hi all - has anyone worked on a project with thermal energy storage tank design in the scope?  I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for specialists or engineers who have experience.  Thanks!

Is anyone else working on a project doing Living Building Challenge v4.0 Energy Petal? We're working through the Imperative 08 Net Positive Carbon Resiliency Strategy requirements that ask for the project to be habitable for a week in the event of an emergency. We're curious how others are defining "habitable" and what systems assumptions... Read more

Question for you all: there is this wonderful graph showing how we can shift mechanical and electrical dollars into envelope investments to make deep energy savings cost-neutral. Have you experienced this on a project?

1-minute or less survey! (two questions, more detail if you want)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/... Read more

Huge shout out to Patty Lloyd, Luke Leung, Janet Olsen, and Sarah Gudeman for their webinar on the Power of Peer Networks. They share lots of insights into the value of participating in BG Peer Networks and many others. Ten bucks to Illinois Green gets you access to the recording--I loved it. What would you have said that they didn't?