We have an unusually long clothes-dryer exhaust duct. It travels along the floor, makes three elbow turns to go up about 8 ft., then a horizontal run to the outside. It’s always been a pain to keep the lint from collecting in the ductwork and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the exhaust efficiency is pathetic.
Many months ago, I acquired the No-Clog Dryer Duct Booster, manufactured by Tjernlund Products Inc., White Bear Lake, MN, one of our regular advertisers. At the time, I put it in the laundry room to be installed “when I get some free time.” Every time I had to move it, I thought to myself, “I really need to install that thing and see if it works as advertised.” It sure wasn’t going to boost any air sitting in its box.
About three weeks ago, I discovered that a contractor we hired for some remodeling had knocked the dryer duct off of the back of the dryer. Every time my wife dried clothes, most of the exhaust was getting pumped into the laundry room. That was the tipping point.
The time had come to install the booster. I dismantled and cleaned the ductwork and, before reassembling, cracked open the Duct Booster box, braced for a some-assembly-required, duct-tape-wrapping, new-wiring, wood-cutting, 10-trips-to-Home-Depot, all-day project. I’m more than happy to report that none of that materialized.
I had to make one trip to Home Depot and had the Booster installed and all ductwork back in place in about an hour. I plugged the Booster in and it did its calibration, as described in the instructions. Yes, I’m one of those who actually reads the instructions.
The real test was the first load of laundry. That happened the next day. My wife and I were at full attention when she punched the start button on the dryer. The dryer started and a brief moment later the Booster fired up. I expected to hear the screaming of a small jet engine. Instead, whatever sound the Booster made/makes, is drowned out by the dryer.
Though quiet, it moves some SERIOUS AIR! I went outside and immediately was concerned that lint would soon be plastered on the neighbor’s house. Warm, moist dryer air was howling out of that vent. Back in the laundry room, the usual buildup of heat during a drying session didn’t happen. Bad in the Illinois winters, but great in the summer when drying clothes was always accompanied by extra AC operation. According to my wife, clothes now dry better and much faster.
My only regret? That I didn’t install the Booster many months ago. I don’t make it a habit of endorsing products (it’s an integrity thing), but there have to be many commercial situations that involve long dryer-exhaust runs. If you have one, put the Booster on your upgrade list, and no, I don’t offer installation services.—Gary L. Parr
Pumping dryer air outside
The things you see at Greenbuild
You would expect to find high-efficiency HVAC products, LED lighting, sustainably grown wood, and low-VOC paint at Greenbuild, which ran in Phoenix from Nov. 11 to 13. And maybe a recycling concierge isn’t too surprising, given the audience. But PDF Man and a dress made of carpet? Here are some shots from the show floor and in and around the Phoenix Convention Center that caught my eye. — Jim Carper
This student made a dress from Shaw carpeting. Her reward (or was it a punishment?) was to walk around the exhibit floor.
Not sure how to dispose of your half-can of soda? The concierge at the recycling bin has the answer. He told me to pour the liquid into the organic hole and toss the can into another.
I’m not up on my superheroes, but I’m pretty sure Wolverine would rip PDF Man to shreds.
Before the minivan, there was the VW minibus. Armstrong’s corrugated cardboard model recalled the days of flower power. Employees dressed in tie-dyed shirts. The aging hippies had receding hairlines and paunches (like me). The young, faux hippies were reed thin. (Jealous? A little.)
Water for handwashing flows out the spout, then drains into the tank, in this toilet from Caroma.
Inside the Phoenix Convention Center. Hirotsune Tashima’s installation titled “Arizona Beach.” Talk about your dry heat. Ooof!
A zero-emissions way to move around Phoenix. And more reliable than Kramer and Newman’s rickshaw in New York City.
I’ve attended a lot of trade shows in the United States and abroad in 30 years, and this is the first time I’ve encountered the term “suitcasing.”
AIA cranks at Congress
I have cranked on previous occasions about how frustrated I am that the river of government handout money for road repair seems to be a raging, never-ending torrent (Cranking here is one thing. You should hear me when I’m circumnavigating construction sites trying to get to work!!), while commercial construction firms can’t seem to get enough credit to be able to move a shovel full of dirt. The holdup doesn’t seem to be so much a desire to receive a D.C. handout as it does a need to have credit availability return to some level of sanity.
Today, the American Institute of Architects, Washington, cranked a little at Congress.
Here’s what the press release tells us was said: Tampa-based architect, Mickey Jacob, FAIA, unveiled the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Rebuild Renew plan for both short- and long-term economic recovery to the House Committee on Small Business at a hearing today. “Small business does not want a bailout. We want access to loans to bridge the economic downturn to help fund operational costs. We want relief from the premium costs of health insurance. We want incentives for people to build, buy, and renovate their homes and businesses. We want the availability of grants that assist in the acquisition and implementation of new technologies to keep small business competitive in the worldwide marketplace. These are investments in the future of the country,” Jacob testified (Download Mickey’s entire statement here.)
The AIA Rebuild Renew Plan recommends these steps:
- Make financing available for design and construction projects.
- Provide tax relief for small businesses.
- Make tax policies work for recovery.
- Rebuild our infrastructure for the 21st century.
- Build the new green economy.
Download the AIA Rebuild Renew Plan here .
I applaud the AIA for being proactive, not just today, but throughout this recession. I just hope that Congress starts to listen.—Gary L. Parr
Overcoming my green guilt
Three months ago we started a kitchen remodeling project. That action tipped the first domino in a long line of those little black rectangles. Since the kitchen, dining room, entry hall, and living room are all on one floor, and because no home project can be simple and defined, we’ve ended up remodeling the entire floor. Part of that project involved removing the carpet from the living room and dining room floors so we could enjoy the hardwood floors that lie beneath.
With that background, here’s where my green guilt comes in.
This past Friday I helped our waste removal specialist toss several rolls of old carpet into his mechanized trash transporter. Since I write and read about sustainable building materials every day, all that went through my mind, as I heaved rolls of carpet into that bin, was whether I should have made an effort to find some kind of carpet recycling pickup service instead of allowing the carpeting and foam padding to go to the landfill. I felt guilty.
Yesterday I had an opportunity to communicate with the good people who do public relations for Dow Chemical Co., Midland, MI, and their carpet backing manufacturing plant in Dalton, GA, which uses Dow’s LOMAX technology process to manufacture latex carpet-backing material. I’d heard the story before, but I’ll tell it again so others can learn and because it helps me with my guilt.
At the Dalton, GA, plant, the process annually uses 160 billion BTU of methane gas from landfills to produce carpet backing material. According to the Dow people, using the methane as an energy source reduces annual CO2 emissions by approximately 20 million lb. and replaces more than 200,000 barrels of black gold. The Dow people also claim that their carpet backing products can represent as many as five points under the renewable-energy section of the new NSF 140 Carpet Sustainability Standard (NSF Int’l, Ann Arbor, MI). Carpets certified under the NSF standard are eligible to receive a half to two LEED innovation points. I could list several other features/benefits about the LOMAX technology, but you get the idea—it’s green good.
Now that my LOMAX knowledge is refreshed, my guilt level is greatly reduced because I can rationalize that maybe the rotting carpet I should have had recycled will do some green good by generating methane gas to power some Illinois entity.—Gary L. Parr
DOE Retrofit Ramp-Up program going fishing
Maybe it’s my cynical mood today, but the recently announced $454 million DOE Retrofit Ramp-Up program, even though it’s in its information-gathering phase, seems to be little more than a fishing expedition. The program is described as being designed to “catalyze a nationwide upgrade that experts estimate could save $100 million annually in utility bills for households and businesses.” That part sounds good. What makes me wonder how well thought out this effort is are vague phrases such as the “program will pioneer innovative models for rolling out energy efficiency,” and “will support large-scale models that can open new energy efficiency opportunities to whole neighborhoods, towns, and, eventually, entire states.”
The announcement is, technically, a Request for Information, designed to generate ideas/feedback for how to spend this money. The announcement was made on Sept. 14 and the feedback period ends Sept. 28. In that timeframe, if you want to provide legitimate input, you either have to already have a plan cooked up or be willing to burn a lot of midnight oil.
According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, “The aim of the ‘Retrofit Ramp-Up’ program is to jump-start an industry that makes energy efficiency savings easy to access and available to everyone. By encouraging partnerships between local governments and effective private enterprises, we hope tune-ups for buildings will become as accepted as tune-ups for cars.”
We’ll see. Sounds to me more like putting $454 million worth of baited hooks in the water and hoping we hook something bigger than a bluegill.—Gary L. Parr
Why don’t we fix our lights?
“Lighting is the single largest user of electricity in commercial buildings. It accounts for 38% of the electric bill—more than cooling, heating, and equipment. If you walk around a commercial building, you see why: The lights are too bright, they’re on for too long, and they illuminate vacant spaces.”
Those two sentences are the opening paragraph of the Building Power feature that appears in our September issue, mailing Tuesday. I’d be willing to bet the $10 in my pocket that that paragraph describes 90% of the commercial buildings that are in use on any given day.
Our concept of commercial building lighting is so antiquated, so ineffective, and so wasteful, that essentially all of it should be scrapped. We have lighting technology available to us today that will chop chunks of money out of our energy bills and do it with a rather short ROI, but we aren’t using it. Why don’t we see a nationwide effort to improve workspace lighting and cut energy costs?.—Gary L. Parr
Stimulus money for buildings?
One of the questions posed in my July/August issue editorial:
When are we going to see stimulus money spent on something other than roads?
Not soon, according to a survey released July 30 by the Associated General Contractors of America, Arlington, VA. According to the report, “the stimulus plan appears to be having little influence on construction companies’ ability to expand payrolls to date. The disappointingly slow pace of construction spending outside of the transportation sector is one of the main reasons for the relatively small impact on new hiring.”
Association CEO Stephen Sandherr said that we are five months into a federal stimulus program that has approximately $135 billion dedicated for construction projects and there is little difference in hiring and purchasing patterns between companies doing stimulus-funded work and companies that aren’t. He stated that while 36% of construction companies with stimulus-funded work plan to hire new employees, an almost identical percentage of firms without stimulus-funded work also plan to make new hires this year or next.
Why? Very little of the stimulus dollars have resulted in actual construction work. The Army Corps of Engineers has $4.6 billion and has only paid out $84 million. The General Services Administration has $5.9 billion and has paid out only $12 million.—Gary L. Parr
DOE needs to lead by example
Often mentioned as part of the Obama Administration’s economic-stimulation program is a plan to invest money to improve the energy efficiency of government buildings. Based on a recent AP story, the President needs to have a meeting with the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) management personnel. Clearly, the organization charged with implementing our energy policies has the wrong concept of what we’re trying to do with that energy. According to the story, DOE auditors reported that they waste enough electricity to power more than 9,800 homes a year by failing to turn down the heat or air conditioning when workers leave for the day. ”In spite of its energy-conservation leadership role, we found that the department and its facility contractors did not place adequate emphasis on reducing energy consumption” by adjusting their after-hours thermostats, wrote inspector general Gregory Friedman.
The auditors found temperature “setback controls” lacking, broken, or unused in 35 of 55 large buildings at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee; the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state. That’s roughly two out of three buildings sampled, including some of DOE’s newest buildings in Oak Ridge.
The Oak Ridge Y-12 plant’s $154-million, privately financed, LEED certified, Jack Case Office Building and New Hope Visitors Center, wastes energy because no one bothered to buy software to make its setback system work.
The auditors, using DOE’s own energy-saving formulas, projected that enforcing temperature setbacks on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning throughout DOE’s more than 9,000 buildings could save more than $11.5 million on the energy agency’s $300-million annual electric bill.
Why is this happening? Wayne Roquemore, spokesman for owner-developer Lawler Wood LLC, Knoxville, TN, said the Oak Ridge buildings actually came with manual setback controls and Lawler Wood has purchased $2,200 in software for automatic controls in response to the audit. ”But the setbacks are still not being used because the occupancy policy has not changed,” he said. “The operating policy has been to keep those buildings suitable for occupancy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
If we had that kind of energy policy in our house, my wife and I would both have to get second jobs. If this kind of waste continues, we may have to anyway, just to pay the tax bill.—Gary L. Parr
What are the ramifications of “competitive pricing”
I don’t normally report press releases from architects or contractors who are starting new projects. It seems counterproductive to rub it in the face of the firm’s competitors and of no interest to those at the other end of the country. But an exception with this one as it raises an interesting question.
The announcement is that R.D. Olson Construction, Irvine, CA, has started building the 129-suite Homewood Suites in Oxnard, CA. Olson is on the fast-track to complete the project by early 2010 after offering its client, T.M. Mian & Associates, Dallas, exceptionally competitive pricing. “Customers are expecting competitive pricing in order to justify building in today’s tough market,” said Joseph Cervantes, Olson’s senior executive vice president operations. “We provide that without compromising quality and schedule.”
The all-suite extended stay hotel, part of the Hilton brand, features a number of in-room amenities geared for vacationers and businesspeople. Those include kitchens, refrigerators, cook-tops, and microwaves. The approximately $10.5 million project was designed by RYS Architects of San Francisco.
The question this announcement raises is in the two statements from Cervantes. Just how much are architects and contractors having to discount their work to get jobs and what is the breaking point? Cervantes claims that they are cutting pricing “without compromising quality and schedule.” Assuming that their work was competitively priced to begin with, and I’m confident it was, something has to give if the project cost is reduced and quality and scheduling maintained. Are the suppliers taking the hit? Are architects and contractors simply working on smaller margins? What is this recession doing to the overall cost structure of commercial construction and will those changes remain in play as the economy recovers? It’s an interesting dynamic and it will be more interesting to see what ramifications result.—Gary L. Parr
H.R. 2187 a drop in the bucket?
In a May 14 blog item, I discussed legislation H.R. 2187, the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, which, that day, was passed by the House of Representatives. The bill, should it be enacted, would authorize $6.4 billion for school districts to do green-oriented renovation work in 2010. To me, $6.4 billion seemed like a ton of money that would make a significant difference.
It became obvious to me that I have absolutely no concept of how far a billion dollars will go when I received a press release a few days ago for the Green California Schools Summit (Dec. 9 to 11, Pasadena). That release refers to H.R. 2187 and then states, “There’s lots of work to be done. The American Federation of Teachers estimates it would cost just short of $225 billion to fully renovate and repair schools across the country.”
If my calculator is accurate, that puts us $218.6 billion short of the needed funds! H.R. 2187 doesn’t even get us in the parking lot with the heavy equipment.
Who is going to provide the rest of the funding? I’ve not recently heard of any states being flush with cash, particularly California, so that’s not a source. I don’t know of one U.S. citizen who will vote for anything that resembles a tax increase and any legislator who supports a tax increase is likely signing his/her own political death warrant.
I still hope that H.R. 2187 gets enacted, but it’s going to take a few more of those $6.4-million payouts to truly make a difference.—Gary L. Parr
