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Team,
After talking to UL today, I thought it will be good for them to do a presentation on what they see in embodied energy/carbon road map of MEP equipment can be like.
Should we schedule them for a 30 minutes presentation in the next call?
Best,
LL
Quiz
Welcome to the quiz portion of Engineering a Wood Revolution
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:
1. Compare engineered wood to steel and concrete; and describe how engineered wood offers better dimensional stability, less waste, and more consistent performance than... Read more
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All--
A few months ago, I sent around a note about an article I was writing about the state of post-occupancy studies. It finally came out, in the latest issue of Metropolis. Great quotes and work from Payette, EDR, KieranTimberlake, HKS, and others. Thanks to all for helping with this.
I don't believe it's available online yet,... Read more
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Hi All,
I'm teaching a class this semester at CU Boulder on Zero Carbon Buildings and Cities (a new class that I'm making up as I go). The hardest part, I'm finding, is locating some good materials that cover the basics of energy efficiency for non-building engineers or designers (we are energy and sustainability generalists in this... Read more
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Hi all,
I am working on a Div 01 sustainability spec section for our firm to include by default on all projects. I've been finding a lot of great sample language out there for embodied carbon measures and material transparency (huge thanks to anyone here who had a part in developing those resources).
One thing I'd like to include... Read more
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Hello All-
We have a K-12 school project that is using a R-60 flat roof assembly as an energy & costing benchmark (along with other energy efficiency measures but this is the relevant detail to our question). The project mechanical engineer is not onboard with a number of our energy conservation measures and has been sharing... Read more
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For those of you working in jurisdictions with both prescriptive and performance-based commercial energy code pathways, roughly what percentage of your projects are using the performance pathway? How do your project teams decide which pathway to follow?
In Minnesota we are seeing very few projects pursuing the performance pathway,... Read more
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Has anyone heard of floating solar technology? I can't think of an application other than covering power plant retention or agricultural waste lagoons. Covering up the sun on a natural body of water and adding electrical wiring seems like a bad idea. I am curious though if others have heard of this technology and have other (unbiased) ideas... Read more
Peer Network Event
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Our Green Team is holding a Biophilic Design workshop on Earth Day with our own staff for biophilic interventions within our office space. We are referencing the Biophilic Design Guidebook from LBC but it will be a shorter time frame, about 1.5 hours total. Last summer we introduced biophilia to the office through the exercise where each person... Read more
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Hi Fellow SD Leaders: This webinar from the AIA and the Building Resilience Coalition looks highly relevant and with some great speakers. It's free and open to all (I think...not sure how AIAU works for non-members.)
Free climate change risk webinar 10/23
Join members of 52 organizations of the Resilience Building Coalition for... Read more
Author
Valentina works on the UX/UI design and front-end of the BuildingGreen and LEEDuser websites. With over 10 years’ experience focused on websites usability, she develops prototypes and cross-browser web interfaces as part of the WebDev team. She also collaborates closely with marketing and editorial to create any other visual design project for... Read more
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This might be going down a rabbit hole, but in moving to California this year I noticed that "zero net energy" (ZNE) is the standard term, whereas "net zero energy" (NZE) was more common back east. The DOE's 2015 definition (below) uses "zero energy building" (ZEB), which to me implies a building uses no energy at all.
Regional... Read more
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Extremely proud to say that the just-announced winner of the international 'Next Generation Facade' design competition is a team led by the 2017-18 EDR Research Fellow, Liz McCormick. The facade normally separates inside from outside. What if the 'facade' was a place you occupied, where you worked? What if different parts of the facade... Read more